


If You're Gonna Bite Be A Big Bad Wolf

by delilahbelle



Series: Conquer the Stars [2]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Moderate depictions of child abuse, Multi, talk of various abuses against children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:45:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 75,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8621458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delilahbelle/pseuds/delilahbelle
Summary: Problems abound at SHIELD--Clint and Bobbi's marriage collapses under his inability to handle his problems, someone is trying to kill Nick Fury, Natasha tries to start dating again, and the hunt for a poison being used to kill kidnapped children takes top priority.





	1. whisper your secrets and mine will take over

**Author's Note:**

> The entirety of this story deals with violence against children.
> 
> Story and chapter titles from Big Bad Wolf by Fifth Harmony

LATE SUMMER 2003

Bobbi originally gave it a month before Clint caved and went back to SHIELD. But it’s been almost four and he shows no signs of relenting. He seems content, happy even.

She knows better.

She is, after all, his wife and she lives with him, and she can’t ignore his restlessness. It manifests itself in so many ways—he starts running daily even though he’s only ever ran because he feels he should, and their refrigerator is always stocked full of just about everything even homemade butters and jams and he even attempts to make his own cheese, and he starts going to the warehouse he owns and used to live in just to shoot. He redecorates their house a million times only to go back to the same white-green-brown scheme they accidentally stumbled upon when they moved in together. He goes to the library daily, reads a dozen books a day somehow. He does a late spring cleaning. He takes summer courses at the nearest community college.

Bobbi bought it at first. Clint seemed manic with energy and away from the darkness that seems to trap spies and assassins, he seemed to flourish. But she realized soon enough that it was only in appearances. She usually didn’t have trouble sleeping, but a mission had gone bad, the intelligence faulty, and she had been helpless to stop the death of a dozen children. She woke from nightmares multiple times a night for two weeks straight, and Clint would never be there.

He wasn’t sleeping. Despite the fact he made a bunch of food, she rarely saw him eat. When she wakes in the middle of the night and waits for him to come home, he comes home in a state of disarray—sweat soaked or speckled with blood, sometimes both, sometimes with knuckles bruised, always limping, always weary and tired. 

She tries to coax him into taking sleeping pills. She tries to coax into therapy or just talking, tries to get him to stay home with her, but nothing works. When sex fails, she starts following him out at night. Sometimes he just goes to the warehouse, but mostly he goes out and picks fights in bars and he appears to have joined some sort of underground fight club.

Which is where she’s going tonight. Bobbi wiggles into her thigh high boots and a red dress that seems to be comprised mostly of translucent lace that she found in the back of her closet in a garment bag. She vaguely remembers it was a gift from her mother. When she hit thirty, her mother seemed to think Clint would begin to lose interest in her. She wonders if her mother thought that because Clint was a few years younger than Bobbi or if she thought that because you started that downward aging slide at thirty. She didn’t know, didn’t care. She never wore it. She didn’t even remember she had it until she was searching her closet for something to wear tonight. She’d followed him there before and she didn’t want to stand out of the crowd so she was wearing what all the other women there wore.

She enters the club fifteen minutes after Clint. She can’t see him in the crowd anymore but she knows what that means. He’ll be fighting and soon. Sure enough, when this fight ends, he takes the risen platform that serves as a stage. He doesn’t notice her in the crowd. He’s never seemed to notice her following him. 

She’s always a little worried when she watching him fight. Outside, on the rooftop opposite this place, it’s difficult for her to see the details but here, fifteen feet away, she worries even more. Clint might not be in the best in hand to hand combat in the world of spies and assassins and underworld crime bosses, but here in the normal world, he’s leagues ahead of anyone else. But he’s pulling his punches. Of course he is. She shouldn’t have worried. Clint’s never enjoyed being a murderer, and he only kills when he thinks the world will be better off without the person. These people are normal, and while they could have done bad things, they would have done things that could have been turned over to the cops and dealt with in the usual manner.

A man hits on her. She tells him she’s with one of the fighters.

When the fight is over and Clint has won, he shakes hands with the man he sparred with and descends into the crowd, smiling politely at the half dozen women in fishnets and smoky eyes smiling sultrily at him.

Bobbi’s a little jealous. She’s never been able to really pull off smoky eyes. And she rips fishnets within seconds half the time.

–

Clint says hello to Marit, a little Swedish woman with big doll-like eyes who hangs onto his every word. He’s never said anything particularly interesting to her, but she always seeks him out. Her husband isn’t the most attentive, and she doesn’t know Clint’s married since he takes his wedding ring off for this. Why, he doesn’t know. He tucks into a little safety pouch in his jeans that’s meant for important information, but he’s not in espionage anymore. He hopes he doesn’t lose it. He’ll have to explain and she’ll be disappointed. 

Speaking of Bobbi…

He catches a glimpse of a blonde in red and turns around. He could have sworn it was Bobbi. He knows every inch of her face, and he could have sworn… But when he turns he doesn’t see anyone in red and wonders if he’s hallucinating. Lack of sleep and all. He thinks he’s slept maybe five hours in the last three days, and he’s long past running on empty. But if there’s a rock bottom, Clint will just grab a pick axe and work himself lower. He shouldn’t have been angry at Fury’s pity, shouldn’t have deflected Bobbi’s worry. But he did, and he’s a little too proud to seek their help now. Fury will offer it. Former agents are always welcome to the use of the therapists if they have time.

He walks to what counts as a bar and orders a double whiskey. The bartender grins at him. “Lady in red wants you, like all the other chicks here.” He hands Clint the glass and jerks his head to the end of the bar.

Clint hands him some cash and makes his way through the crowd, stopping short when he catches the lady in red. He guesses it’s a good thing he’s not hallucinating, but what was Bobbi doing here?

She hasn’t seemed to notice him yet, although one can never tell with a spy, so he moves behind her, wraps his arm around her waist. There’s a moment where she tenses in preparation for a fight before she realizes it’s him. As she settles back against, he asks, “How much trouble am I in?”

“I’m still deciding,” she says tartly. “Are you that desperate for thrills? Fury’ll give you your job back no hesitation. Natasha will be grateful for having her partner back. I think Hill will prefer it too. Natasha’s been a thorn in her side as a partner. Hill’s not cut out to keep up with her.”

“I heard they took out the Duke of Hell.”

“How do you know that?”

“Barney.” He’d been tentatively speaking to Barney once a week. So far, things were going okay, mostly because they didn’t talk about anything personal ever, not since that first week where Clint called him and yelled for an hour about him putting that story in the report. Then he called him back the next day and apologized because he still doesn’t understand Gashi but he does understand why he did that.

“They _destroyed_ the Duke of Hell. But that’s not why we’re here.”

“Why are _you_ here?”

“I’ve followed you here for days. Thought it was about time I went in.” She plucks the glass from his hand and takes a sip, wrinkling her nose at the burn. “Whiskey is very cliché, honey. I hope you know that.”

“It’s a tried and true way to get drunk.”

“Is that what you’re doing here?”

He shifts uncomfortably and chooses to ignore the question in favor of eying her breasts. The translucent material shows off every shift, and the lace gives flashes of her skin, and he can tell she’s not wearing a bra.

After a minute, he feels her smack at his arm. “Earth to Clint.”

“Where did you get this dress?”

“It was a birthday present from my mother.”

“Why didn’t you ever wear it?”

“It was a birthday present from my mother.”

“I like it.”

“I’m pretty sure that was her intent. She thought I’d turn thirty and immediately get old and fat so I needed something to keep your attention.”

He hums a vague murmur of acknowledgment as he slides his fingers underneath the hem of the dress. It’s mostly out of habit. This fresh off a fight, he doesn’t want sex. He wants another fight. And they both know it.

“Hey, Finch, you wanna fight again?”

“Duty calls,” Clint murmurs against her ear, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Finch?”

“Thought I’d stick with the bird theme. I also have an ID in that name if anyone wants to know.”

“I’m gonna kill you, you know.”

“As long as you’re still wearing at that, I’m good with it.”

–

Natasha pushes open the door to the orphanage and knows what she’s going to find. The dead bodies of experimented on children. She hates this job sometimes, but she chose to come back to it. She wasn’t cut out for security and she misses the thrill of a kill. She’s pretty sure Fury only let her have it back because Clint quit in a fit of pique, but whatever the reason, she’s here and she’ll do whatever she can.

Behind her, Hill unholsters her gun and creeps silently to the side door. She pushes it open and they find what they expected to find the second they got here and saw the doors locked—a child’s dead body. The way the body has been set up is a grotesque parody of a doll. Big circles of blush on the cheeks and the eyes have been propped open, and the lips are painted on. She’s sitting on a chair dressed in a gingham dress, hands folded primly on her lap, a white bandage stained with blood around her neck like a choker. Natasha wants to throw up. She has no idea how Hill feels but it can’t be better. 

“They had time,” Hill breathes out, her skin looking pale and gray underneath the harsh fluorescent lights. 

“They knew someone was coming,” Natasha says just as quietly.

They go through another set of doors into the main orphanage. All the children are the same, the boys without the lipstick and with the blood dripping down onto their clothes instead of mostly hidden behind a bandage. Natasha checks the pulses of them all but the bodies are evacuating, so she knows what she will find. Once they check the entirety of the place, they go back to check the offices for information. They don’t find any, and they didn’t expect to.

“Is is just me or have there been a lot of child murders recently?” Almost every agent had worked a case like this recently. 

Hill sighs. “Twenty two cases. Two hundred and three children dead. Most of them were sold into prostitution.”

Trust Hill to know the stats.

Natasha looks for secret compartments. She doesn’t find any. Even if she did, she has the feeling all the information is long gone. The bodies have been dead for hours. Whoever did this was long gone. “Let’s phone it in.”

Hill dusts off her hands and glances at the dead little girl in the office. “Why do I get the feeling she was the first one to die?”

Natasha reaches out to pet the girl’s strawberry blonde hair. It feels ice cold on her skin. “She probably was.”

–

Clint fights two more fights that night, bringing his total to four. Bobbi wasn’t that angry to begin with but as he kept slipping away from her she felt the anger well up and take over her intentions of speaking to him rationally. When they leave, around five in the morning, the smell of cigarette smoke stubbornly clinging to her clothes, she says, “If you want a fight, I could have given you a fight.”

He stops short and eyes her. “I wanted to break something.”

“An accountant’s nose? A cashier’s fingers? A banker’s ribs? _Yourself? _”__

__He laughs bitterly. “I didn’t need to break myself.”_ _

__“I tried to help you. I don’t know what to do with you. For you.”_ _

__“I don’t want your help.”_ _

__“What do you want?”_ _

__He doesn’t answer._ _

__“I know what you want, Clinton. You want to fight. You want to break everything the way everything broke you. You want to set the world on fire and watch it burn. But you can’t do that.” And even though she knows she’ll regret it, her anger pushes her on. “You’re too weak and too pathetic to do that. So you just play games like those guys in there. You’re just average and you’re playing at be strong.”_ _

__He barks out a short, bitter laugh. “And what are you, Mockingbird? A bitter old woman with a heart of ice and a soul to match. You enjoyed it when you first killed. I know. I was there, remember? You’re a monster, and a PhD and fading attractiveness is all you have to rely on outside that. And who knows? Maybe you only have that because the dean wanted to fuck you.”_ _

__They will both regret this in the morning. She knows it, he knows it. But they’ll do it anyway._ _

__“You want a fight, little Hawk?” She sneers at him and jerks her batons out of her hair, letting them grow to full length. “Let’s fight.”_ _

__–_ _

__Clint spares a brief thought for the idea that he should just apologize and talk to her, but that thought goes away as quickly as came. He’s too angry for it. He dodges her blow and curses the fact that the only weapon he’s carrying is a knife that won’t do anything against her batons. He kicks her legs out from under her to give himself a second to think. It doesn’t really work because when she hits the ground, he feels her spiky heel dig itself into the back of his knee and he drops without registering it._ _

__He feels rather than sees the batons aiming at him and rolls over, one of the batons hitting the ground less than an inch from his head. He throws her off of him and stumbles to his feet. He isn’t used to fighting spies anymore, and he’s already tired from his fights earlier. He scrambles for something to use as a weapon, but this fighting ring is illegal, and they keep the area around here clean to keep the cops away. He dodges her next blow and manages to knock one of her batons out of her hand. He grabs it before she can and parries her next blow._ _

__This is ridiculous, he thinks as he throws off another blow. He does want a fight and he is angry but he isn’t mad at Bobbi and he doesn’t want want to fight her. But she’s livid, and it is aimed at him so he settles for trying to knock the other baton out of her hand._ _

__Instead, she gets her baton back from him._ _

__Clint dodges another blow. Taking advantage of the angle, he kicks her legs out of under her so she lands on top of him. He grips her arms too tightly for her to move and rolls them over so he’s pinning her down. She drops the batons and hisses at him. Actually hisses. For a moment he’s so surprised he almost loses his grip on her but he manages to pin her down. She’s angry but if she really wanted to hurt him she could have._ _

__“What is your problem?” he asks. It’s not what he meant to say, or at least he didn’t mean to say it like that. He softens his tone. “This isn’t about me sneaking out at night.”_ _

__Bobbi kicks at him. “Yes it is. It’s about you sneaking off. It’s about you not telling me anything and cutting me out and…” She throws him off. He whines a bit as he hits a trashcan. As he stumbles to his feet, she picks her batons up, shrinks them to the size of hair clips, and pins her hair back. It’s always a neat trick. “You know what this is about, Barton? You brought your old partner in—a woman who tried to kill me—and you did everything in your power to protect her. You moped for days whenever she didn’t want to talk to you. When she left. Every time you grab your phone you start to dial her number. You ask me about her all the time. I can’t get you to listen to me about my day, but you ask about her. Hell, I can’t get you to give me five minutes of your time, but apparently you can spend hours caramelizing onions for a soup you don’t even eat!”_ _

__Clint stumbles back, as much at her words as the shove she gives him. They stare at each other for a beat, then she runs her hand through her hair and turns away. “I’m leaving, Clint. I’m done.”_ _

__–_ _

__Natasha rubs her arms and tries not to sigh again. She was through with winter, so of course this mission had to take place in New Zealand. It wasn’t horribly cold, not like Russian or a New York winter, but it’s cold enough to annoy her as she and Hill wait outside the orphanage for a SHIELD team to come and deal with the dead bodies. Dead children, some of them as young as three. Would she never escape dead children? Not in this job probably. In a few years though, hopefully she’ll gain enough trust to retire without having SHIELD’s presence always just around the corner. And hopefully she won’t end up dragged into some sort of mission. She isn’t too sorry to have Masterson, Chisholm, and Duquesne behind bars, and she certainly isn’t unhappy that Ivan is long dead, but she hadn’t wanted to be dragged back into this._ _

__Yet she took the job offer. Before she knew Clint had quit in anger, before she really thought about it. She was afraid the programming would kick in again at some point, afraid she would end up being alone again, afraid someone would get sick of her and just shoot her so no one had to do anything anymore._ _

__And it isn’t the worst thing ever, although she hasn’t talked to Clint in months. Bobbi’s seemed more distant too, but Natasha hopes that’s just because she’s been busy. She doesn’t know how to bear it if Bobbi ended up ignoring her too._ _

__An armored truck slides to a stop in front of them. An agent in a blue jumpsuit exits and shows them his badge. He looks Maori. Hill flashes hers, being a stickler for the rules with agents she doesn’t know. “How many bodies?” he asks._ _

__“About forty,” Hill says tensely. He nods, sends a text, and pulls out a camera, taking the necessary pictures for the file. Natasha watches him; she isn’t usually around for this process. The spies and assassins don’t usually deal with these things. She watches him takes notes and take stock as four more agents exit the back of the truck carrying bundles. Another truck pulls up behind the first and Natasha and Hill make the silent decision to leave._ _

__Back in the safe house, Hill takes a hot enough shower that Natasha can see the steam rising up from the closed door. She peels off her clothes and changes into sweatpants and boots as she wonders if she ought to check on her. Hill keeps a calm head when she’s away from it, but this close to the murder of forty odd children, she’s tenser than usual. Hopefully that won’t translate to her passing out from the steam of the shower, but she doesn’t know. Hill takes a lot of hot showers after they walk in on things like this. Natasha can never tell if it’s meant to make her relax or if she’s trying to feel cleaner. She’ll need more than hot water for the first and nothing with work for the second._ _

__She pushes the door open. The shower is still running. Behind the thin frosted curtain, she can see the blurry outline of Hill’s stiff body, her head bowed down, the water hitting over her shoulders. “I’m going to go out of a little bit,” she calls. “I’ll leave the door open so you don’t suffocate.”_ _

__“Okay,” is all Hill says in return._ _

__Natasha finds a grocery store and picks up random things that they can snack on. Mostly cookies and candies because she’s noticed that’s all Hill eats when she’s tense. Natasha doesn’t mind. She picks up the ingredients to make fairy bread because when in Rome and all that, but mostly she wanders around the store to give herself something to focus on._ _

__Fury had given her full access to the Red Room files and SHIELD’s reports on the Red Room. She doesn’t know how many dead bodies she came across in both her memories and in the photographs accompanying the reports. She studied them for days and tested herself by trying to remember the girls’ names before she reads it and she’s mostly done it—Antonina and her flame red that was comparable to Natasha’s which why she had to kill her, Taisia who was the first girl to die on a mission, Marta who died during yet another procedure the Red Room put them under. Alisa, with her fair hair and big blue eyes who they kept too young for too long. Nika, the first one to disappointed Ivan and company. She just disappeared one night never to be seen again. Inna, who ran off with a man. Natasha killed them both. Her and Lucya. Oh, and Lucya, her face bright with happiness and glee even in the midst of murder. Vera, ghost pale and vividly bright. And Yelena. Oh god, Yelena. They had no photo of Yelena’s death—she was not among the girls dressed in their best red dresses and laid out of the winter’s newest snowfall when the Red Room collapsed and they learned they couldn’t control them. She wonders when Yelena died._ _

__Natasha finds herself starting at a display of wine. She tosses a few in her basket. She’ll get tipsy and gorge on sweets and mope. That sounds like a fun time. She tosses a few more things in her basket, checks out, and goes down the street to buy fried scallops and chips._ _

__Hill eyes the bags when she gets back. She’s redressed in a tank top and sweatpants and she’s cleaning her weapon, the steam from the shower permeating the air of the entire space. “Something healthy?” she asks skeptically when Natasha says she bought lunch._ _

__Hill survives on coffee and smoothies outside of a mission. So Natasha gives the best smile she can muster and says, “Of course.”_ _

__“I can smell fried food,” she argues, but she gives in and opens the first bottle of wine._ _

__–_ _

__Bobbi is halfway through clearing out her half of the closet when it occurs to her that she ought to just tell Clint to go somewhere else. He has safe houses in New York, holdovers from his freelance days, while she owned nothing, not even the matchbox studio apartment she lived in when she first moved to New York and decided the little rooms at SHIELD were only good for driving her up the wall. She held onto the apartment for several years since it was rent controlled and she’d been beyond lucky to find it in the first place, but eventually she gave it up, realizing there was no point in holding onto it when you lived in a house that cost almost a three quarters of a million even before you factored in the remodeling and decorating, which cost another few thousand alone. They live so far away from the hustle and bustle of the main parts of the city that they managed to add a small front porch and a larger back one, and they’d added a few secret compartments and did some reinforcing to the exercise room. Decorating had been simple—they settled on brown furniture because the only other color the store had for the couch they liked was a hideous shade of vomit. The added green furnishings were a mistake, a simple coincidence. They just kept ending up with things in green—a glass table with green stained glass legs, silverware with green handles, a vase made out of green marble. All of these were wedding gifts and then Clint showed up a green frog to hang green oven mitts on and it just sort of spiraled out from there._ _

__She hadn’t really like the unintentional color scheme at first but she was long since used it and she certainly liked it better than the attempt at monochrome minimalism Clint made last month. She waited through that attempt as patiently as possible while he finally figured out that the chrome and white scheme just made their house feel reminiscent of SHIELD. When she tried to suggest that was exactly why he did it, he stormed out of the house in a rush and come home some hours later smelling heavily of cigarette smoke and gin._ _

__Bobbi drops the dress to the ground and sinks down on the floor next to it. This is her house, and this is her husband, and she doesn’t know where her tirade came from earlier but she knows every word of it is true. She hadn’t realized she was holding on to that much anger and misery but she shouldn’t have been surprised. She likes Natasha, but without him around, it’s been more and more difficult to talk to her. She doesn’t understand Natasha like Clint does, and the truth is, Bobbi’s starting to feel like maybe no one understands Clint like Natasha does. And she’s just… angry. And miserable. And lonely. He doesn’t talk to her anymore, he doesn’t seem to want her. Her friends are always busy. She’s never really had a family. The past four months have been her slogging her feet through the mud, trying to keep her head up and hoping something will change. She’s spent a lot of time in therapy, hoping to figure out what exactly she was feeling, but she couldn’t put it into words until she got in Clint’s face and shouted._ _

__She’s unhappy, and she can’t pinpoint the exact moment when she stopped feeling like she was part of his life._ _

__She picks herself up off the floor and goes into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. As she stirs in some milk, Clint opens the front door and cautiously peeks around the door. She looks up at him and wonders what to say._ _

__“Can we talk?” he asks quietly._ _

__“About?”_ _

__“I never meant to hurt you. This wasn’t about you at all.”_ _

__“So I’m being selfish.”_ _

__Clint makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “I didn’t say that.”_ _

__“I know.” She gestures to the coffee. Slowly, he goes to the cabinet and pulls out a mug. He sits down opposite her and she fills the cup. “Maybe I am being a little selfish. I just feel like I’m always dealing with your problems.”_ _

__“Well, I have a lot of them.”_ _

__She snorts and tops off her cup. “You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t want to deal with your issues. And part of me feels like I’m not as important to you as Natasha.”_ _

__“You have to know that’s not true.”_ _

__“That’s the thing. I don’t know that at all.”_ _

__He stays silent, and she fiddles with her cup. There shouldn’t be a vast chasm between them but she feels it anyway. She’s sitting in a room with him and she still feels like he’s not really with her. “I just,” she pauses, presses her lips together, takes another sip of coffee. “I don’t mind dealing with your problems. But you don’t deal with them. And then they fester and they start to touch our marriage. And I’ve been doing this for so long it feels like… I don’t feel like your wife. I feel like your therapist. Or a ghost. I feel like a ghost. You’re even talking to Barney again but you aren’t talking to me.” She runs her hands through her hair. “I’m not explaining this well.”_ _

__“I understand you,” he says quietly._ _

__“I love you, but I am not happy. Not with how everything stands right now.”_ _

__Clint tilts his head to study her. “You still want to leave.”_ _

__“I want you to leave,” she says. “Not… I’m not throwing you out. I mean, I would like to step away from our relationship for a while and I don’t have another place in town to stay. I guess I could get a room at SHIELD.”_ _

__“No, it’s okay. I’ll be in SoHo if you need me.” He hesitates then reaches out, brushing his fingertips against hers. She lets him take her hand. “Can I explain?” he asks, and he waits for her to nod before he continues. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to deal with it. I should have. You’re right. I miss SHIELD. And I do miss Natasha, but it has nothing to do with you or us.”_ _

__“It doesn’t?” She doesn’t mean to sound so disbelieving._ _

__“It doesn’t. I’m just used to having you here and… I guess sometimes I take you for granted. But I don’t love Natasha—I know you think I do—and I’m really sorry I didn’t consider the fact that she almost killed you. It happens so often in our line of work. It just blended into the other times.”_ _

__“I’m not mad about that. I’m really not,” she says when Clint opens his mouth to argue. “She was trained to do so, and she’s making her own decisions now. I do like her. I think you’re just a little obsessive with her.”_ _

__“I don’t mean to be. She’s just really the only friend I’ve ever had.”_ _

__“You have Hill now.”_ _

__“I know.”_ _

__“Do you?”_ _

__Clint flinches a little. He fiddles with the cup and says slowly, “Sometimes… sometimes I feel like everyone was right not to love me.”_ _

__She knows this admission is only being made in order to show her he’s willing to talk, but she’s still grateful for that little nugget of information. She suspected but she never knew for certain. “They were wrong, and so are you. There’s a lot of love about you.”_ _

__“So are we getting a divorce?”_ _

__And he changed the subject. Of course. “If you want.”_ _

__“That’s the furthest thing from what I want.”_ _

__“I want to be apart from you for a bit. Maybe a month or so. We can just—be single. See if we can find something new. Then we can talk after a few weeks.” She hesitates. “I’d like you go to therapy. I’d like you to try to talk about it. Even with Barney. Or Hill. Or Natasha.”_ _

__“Okay.” He hesitates then stands. “I’ll grab some stuff and be out of your way.”_ _

__–_ _

__At dawn, he gets to his SoHo apartment with a duffel bag of clothes and something approaching terror deep in his stomach. He hasn’t been without Bobbi for so long that this feels wrong, just wrong. He dusts and puts sheets on the bed and walks down the grocery store for food. He thinks it will be easy to do but he’s used to buying for two. He keeps grabbing things he doesn’t eat but she does, and he puts them back when he remembers. It ends up taking forever to get through the store. When he gets back to the apartment, it takes him all of twenty minutes to run out of things to do._ _

__He leaves a message on Hill’s phone. It’ll be her birthday soon, so he asks her if she wants to meet him sometime so he can give her a present. He heads out to buy her a present which ends up being that expensive coffee she likes but she won’t ever buy herself. Down the street from that shop is one that sells silly little things, so he buys her novelty socks, one with little suns wearing sunglasses, one with margaritas, one that looks like a beach. He noticed her love of weird socks when he visited her in the military hospital and talked her into coming to SHIELD. She tried to hide her feet, but one leg was still in a cast and the other had taken a battering too. As he’s checking out, he impulsively grabs a doormat that says “if you forgot the wine, go home.”_ _

__When he gets back to the apartment, he can’t find anything to do and he doesn’t think he can sleep so he calls Barney. On the last ring, he answers sleepily. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” Clint says self-consciously, and for the first time it strikes him that’s he really not good at being alone. It hasn’t even been a full six hours and he’s already desperate for company. He undoubtedly did take Bobbi for granted, but her mere presence was reassuring. He knew he wasn’t alone. Now he is, and it’s mostly a situation of his own choosing._ _

__He’s always been good at making the worst decisions he could have made. He should have known better. He did know better. But he was good at avoiding what he couldn’t handle, and he thinks he has no one else to blame but himself. He should have considered Bobbi when he brought Natasha in, regardless of how much the wound had healed by the time he saw her again. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered his wife. That wasn’t like him at all. Is that what Natasha really did to him?_ _

__“Clint,” Barney says in a tone that tells him it’s at least the fifth repetition of his name._ _

__“Bobbi and I split up. Temporarily. I think.”_ _

__“You think you split up or you think it’s temporary?”_ _

__“Temporary. I mean… I think it’s really up to her.” He laughs but cuts it off when he realizes how harsh it sounds. “She said we should just act like we were single. I guess that makes sense.” A part of him wanted to accuse her of wanting someone else but then again, he thinks he could hardly blame her._ _

__“How’re you holding up?”_ _

__“It’s been six hours and I’m already out of things to do.”_ _

__“You could go back to work.”_ _

__This isn’t the first time Barney has suggested this. At this point it’s more rote than a genuine suggestion. “I might, actually. I miss it.”_ _

__“I know.”_ _

__Everyone knew. Except Clint. He hadn’t really realized it before. He hadn’t wanted to be a killer after all. He wasn’t really cut out for the lying and manipulation. But he did it, and he did it well, and part of him misses the ability to save people’s lives. He’d tried to channel into other things but Bobbi was right. How many hours had he spent wasting time just to give himself something to do? He hadn’t stopped to think or talk to her because he knew what was going to happen. He was going to remember that he actually liked his job most of the time. He was going to remember he wasn’t that interested in photography or hiking or any of the other dozen hobbies suggested to him over the years. He was going to remember why he didn’t like reading that much—it was impossible to find a comfortable position to read in, and after a while all the plots start to sound the same and he can’t tell one book from another. He was going to remember that if he slept, if he stopped, he would dream of Buck and Jacques, of his father, of failed missions and all the suicidal thoughts that crept up from time. They all liked to pop at once until he’s drowning in it. And he hadn’t wanted to drown. Understandable, he supposes, but he had a team of therapists at SHIELD and a civilian therapist too. He could have done something to mitigate the drowning._ _

__He hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t. Sometimes he thinks he finds it easier to drown._ _

__“Not today, though,” Clint says after a beat._ _

__Courage is not something he has ever had in spades. Some people think he does. He never believes them. And this will require even more courage. He will have to face Bobbi too and know he has lost her, even temporarily._ _

__Barney snorts. “Of course not.” And the words echo mockingly long after he hangs up the phone._ _

__–_ _

__Bobbi goes into work late, having called the deputy director at five in the morning to tell him she was having some issues. McKay doesn’t ask what these issues are. He makes her an appointment with her usual therapist and informs her there will be a meeting at three if she can make it. She promises she’ll be there and goes about reorganizing her closet, drinking a glass or two of straight up gin that’s in their freezer and goes to bed._ _

__When she arrives at three, there’s a group of people she doesn’t expect to be assembled. Four forensic pathologists, eight medical examiners, and several other people from the forensic team are there. They rarely attend meetings and even less rarely interact with the field agents. Fury and McKay are at the head of the table looking grim. Around them are a dozen spies including Natasha, Hill, and Rebecca, and there another dozen or so uniformed field agents. The room is crowded. Bobbi is aware that in her hands in the paperwork for monitoring on her house, given to her by the therapist as she left the appointment. SHIELD insists on it when agents live alone. When she and Clint were both gone on mission, their home was monitored by SHIELD but now it has to be no matter if she’s there or not. Bobbi knows why SHIELD does it, but carrying the paperwork makes her feel conspicuous. Even though everyone is flipping through individual reports and not paying any attention to her._ _

__She lays the clipboard face down and sits in the only open chair next to Rebecca. It’s a tight fit. There are at least forty people in the room and the table is only meant to only thirty. Rebecca silently hands her a stack of papers. Bobbi realizes they’re her own reports. She moves her chair back a little and grabs the clipboard, using the reports to cover the paperwork._ _

__The clock strikes three and everyone looks up at Fury. “This meeting is now in session,” he says and McKay poises his pen to take notes as if there isn’t a camera recording all of this. “I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you here. You’ll notice we have our forensics department with us. All of the agents here have worked cases involving the death of multiple children with no obvious wounds in the past few months. According to the reports, they were all killed with an unknown poison. They broke down the components to the best of their abilities but it isn’t enough. I would like to go over everyone’s reports.”_ _

__When the meeting winds down some four hours later, they have their missions. Bobbi will go with Natasha, and Hill to Hungary and Belarus where they triangulated two likely positions given what they’ve complied. She knows they work well together and it’s unlikely anyone else would be able to deal with Natasha but she wishes she could ask Fury to reassign her. But he will ask for an explanation and she doesn’t have one._ _

__She grabs food from the cafeteria and tackles the paperwork. Natasha and Hill will stop by eventually to discuss the mission. They will leave in the morning after Natasha and Hill sleep since they flew in from New Zealand, arriving only minutes before the meeting. Bobbi gives in an hour before they show up but she doubts she’ll be done with the paperwork before that. The sheer amount of information requested is time consuming enough even without the repetition. Half the forms ask the same few things. And every time she puts her pen to the papers she hesitates. There’s still a traitor or two lurking in SHIELD. Fury hadn’t found anyone. No one in Petrovich’s prison had the necessary clearance or seemed close to someone who might have it. There was always the possibility that the traitor heard the gossip or had been at SHIELD long enough to remember when Fury was still married. But no one seemed to match up and while they had all been interrogated no one had given anything up. Most had been offended to even be questioned. They had reported Petrovich’s disappearance when they realized it happened, just half an hour before he appeared to Hill and Clint. Security cameras didn’t even show him leaving. Were they looking at a mutant helper? Professor Xavier promised his help, but the X-Men had their own problems._ _

__At eight on the dot, Natasha knocks on her door. Bobbi throws article on evolution of birds on top of her half finished paperwork and calls, “Come in!” in her cheeriest voice. She winces at how fake and happy she sounds._ _

__“Hill went out to dinner with Clint,” Natasha says as she opens the door, completely unaware of how her words hit. Bobbi holds in her flinch and focuses on readjusting her glasses, eventually taking them off completely and putting them back in their case._ _

__“Will she be back soon?”_ _

__“I hope so,” Natasha says as she sinks into a chair. “Clint must have left her a message telling her he bought her birthday present. Since we’re leaving I guess she thought she ought to get it first.”_ _

__Bobbi wonders if Clint will tell Hill about their separation. If they’re having dinner together, they will have to talk about something to fill the time. Why not their marriage? It won’t be a secret for long. Once she turns in the paperwork, she gives it three hours before the entire base knows. Fury will be annoyed with her for not coming to him. All her friends will ask why she didn’t call them. McKay will want to know why she didn’t just tell him when she called this morning. He would have filled out the paperwork with all the known information so she didn’t have as much to do._ _

__Bobbi doubts she will have satisfactory answer for any of them. Until she woke up this afternoon, the idea of her and Clint no longer living together and their marriage falling apart didn’t seem real._ _

__“Great, that’s great.” She wonders when Clint bought the present. He keeps all the presents he buys except hers in the hallway closet. She’s in it all the time; she knows there hasn’t been anything in there in a while._ _

__“Are you okay?”_ _

__“Just tired. Long night.” Her voice sounds wrong even to her own ears, but Natasha doesn’t seem to notice a thing. “Do you have any ideas for the mission?”_ _

__Natasha glances down the paper in her hand. It’s a list of places to check out, people to talk to, all agreed upon before they ever left the meeting. The teams would try to hit up as many places as possible, and in order to reduce any wastes of time, no one would intentionally talk to the same people. “Not really. I don’t know most of these people. These aren’t countries I usually work in. Do you?”_ _

__A few names jumped out at Bobbi as unlikely suspects so she listed them off. Natasha grabs a pen from her desk and marks them. “Why do you think they’re unlikely?”_ _

__Bobbi clears her throat and shifts around things on her desk. She berates herself for acting guilty when there was no reason to. “I’ve met some of these guys before. If they had access to an unknown poison with quick killing capabilities that was unable to be broken down and recreated without extensive effort, they wouldn’t be using to kill children or selling it on. They’d be poisoning water mains.”_ _

__“Cheery.”_ _

__–_ _

__Natasha is relieved when Hill shows up. After half an hour in Bobbi’s lab office, she’s feeling distinctly out of sorts. Bobbi hasn’t been very friendly in the past few months, but tonight she seems like she wants to be anywhere but in a room with Natasha. At the meeting earlier, when Natasha tried to smile at her, Bobbi looked away as if she hadn’t even noticed. Maybe she hadn’t. But Natasha doubts that. Bobbi looked up at her while she spoke and looked away the second she smiled._ _

__She was about to ask what was wrong—what did she do wrong—when Hill enters the room, carrying an obnoxiously shiny pink and silver bag bogged down by ribbons and small balloons. Natasha has never received a wrapped present from Clint but somehow she isn’t surprised to learn that’s how he wraps presents._ _

__Before she ask what Hill got, Hill frowns down at Bobbi and says, “Were you planning on telling anyone you and Barton broke up?”_ _

__Bobbi stiffens. “I should have expected he would tell you.”_ _

__Hill studies her face while Natasha tries to get a hold of her gaping. Before she can, Hill nods once and asks, “How are you holding up?”_ _

__Bobbi pulls a clipboard out from a stack of papers and waves it at them. “I’m filling out paperwork that drives home that I live alone now and…” She sighs and breaks off. “Honestly? I feel like I’ve just removed an albatross from my neck. It feels better. It feels right. He was drowning himself in misery and taking me down with him. But that makes me feel guilty too.”_ _

__“Don’t be. If it was bad, it was bad. No one will blame you for leaving.”_ _

__“We’re… being single, I guess. I suggested it but I don’t know anymore. I don’t want to date again. I just want to be away from him.”_ _

__Hill’s tone softens just a little. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. Will you be okay to do this?”_ _

__Bobbi nods._ _

__Natasha shifts uncomfortably in her chair. Part of her wants to reach across the desk and hug Bobbi, who looks worn down and tired all of a sudden. But a part of her—and she fears it’s a much larger part—wants to run out and find Clint. Single. Surely since Bobbi suggested it she can’t be mad if Clint finds some comfort in Natasha’s arms…_ _

__The thought quickly fades as if someone dumped ice water on her. Clint doesn’t want her. He hasn’t even spoken to her in months, and he’s never given her any indication he would welcome her advances. But mostly, if she tries now, she knows he will hate her forever. Bobbi is already pulling away from her without Clint here to force their company. Bobbi has friends and has no need to spend any time with Natasha whatsoever. If she sleeps with Clint, she gets the feeling she will ruin their chances of reconciliation, and he won’t forgive that. He won’t forgive her. Or himself, not ever. And she isn’t that spiteful. She doesn’t want him that much. It’s a point of pride that lingers and still stings from time to time but it won’t be worth it. Even if Bobbi does hate her._ _

__But she doesn’t really think Bobbi hates her. They have never been the closest of friends, and they have no reason to share company, but Bobbi’s never been cold. She’s been a little more distant, but that can mean anything. Maybe it was her problems with Clint. Maybe they just needed to be closer. Talk more. Maybe it wasn’t anything to worry about at all—although she had worried. But she probably didn’t need to, right? Just because her only friend was at this point Hill didn’t mean that couldn’t still be friends with Bobbi when all is said and done. And Clint, if he ever comes to his senses._ _

__If Clint wants to be friends with her that is. He certainly hasn’t been giving her that impression. She resolves to call him before she goes to sleep. Surely he wouldn’t ignore her._ _

__–_ _

__The phone rings and Clint just glances at it. Answering requires getting up off the bed and crossing the room. Granted, it’s a five hundred square foot studio, so crossing the room won’t take much but he isn’t willing to move. He hasn’t really slept in weeks, but he’s spent several hours in bed even though it’s barely ten o’clock and he can’t get to sleep. He’s too used to having Bobbi next to him. Even on missions he doesn’t sleep as well, although he usually sleeps better than this._ _

__The ringing stop and starts again. And again. After the fifth time, he finally untangles the sheets from his legs and goes to answer it so that whoever is calling will leave him alone. He sees Natasha’s name flash across the screen and the phone goes silent again. He’s not sure he wants to hear from her so he settles the phone on the couch and goes to grab a beer. He’s on bottle number three when the phone rings again._ _

__He should have known she wouldn’t give up. He flips open the phone. “Hello,” he says mostly steady, but the combination of alcohol and no sleep is starting to make him unsteadier than only three beers would suggest._ _

__“Hello,” she says pleasantly. “Hill’s balloons are still full.”_ _

__“Really?” he says, not meaning to sound as doubtful as he does. “I blew them up this morning.”_ _

__“Why? If you didn’t know where she was. We just flew in from New Zealand this afternoon. And we’re leaving again in the morning.”_ _

__“I was bored.”_ _

__“Missing Bobbi you mean?”_ _

__“Why are you calling?”_ _

__“I was checking up on you.”_ _

__“We aren’t friends.”_ _

__“You said we were.”_ _

__“Months ago.”_ _

__“I wasn’t stopping.”_ _

__Clint throws the empty bottle against the wall. “What do you want?”_ _

__“Look, you’re going to be on your own for a month or so. A bunch of children have been killed with an unknown poison that we haven’t been able to break down or recreate. Fury’s sending almost thirty people out just to work this. Bobbi, Hill, and I leave in the morning for Eastern Europe. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to try to commit suicide while we were gone.”_ _

__“We’re gonna fix this. Why would I kill myself if we’re gonna fix this?”_ _

__Natasha hums like she’s considering something. “Bobbi seemed relieved. Not that she won’t miss you,” she hurries to add. “I think you’ve been a headache lately. She just needs a break. I don’t mean that she won’t want to fix things. I just think it’s not going to happen immediately. Especially since we’re going to focused on working.”_ _

__“I’ll be fine,” he says, but it sounds hollow even to his own ears. Better than Natasha, who he’s pretty sure is manipulating him. Or maybe not. Maybe he just wants someone to blame. He probably wouldn’t be able to tell if she’s manipulating him anyway._ _

__“If you’re sure,” she says._ _

__“I’m sure.”_ _

__Still she doesn’t hang up the phone._ _

__Neither does he._ _

__“I miss you,” she says a little sadly._ _

__“You’re definitely manipulating me now.”_ _

__There’s a pause then she laughs. “Sorry! I promised myself I wasn’t going to try to wiggle into your bed.”_ _

__Clint stops his mind from wandering down that road. He probably wouldn’t say no. Isn’t that a great thought? Maybe Bobbi’s right. Maybe he’s just a little too obsessed with Natasha. “You haven’t been doing a great job.”_ _

__“Yeah,” she murmurs sadly. “I haven’t. Well, if you’re sure you’re okay. Call me if you need me. Or Hill. She’ll always take your calls.”_ _

__He knows. Maria had shown no censure at his sudden call after weeks. She’d been the same as ever, as if his abrupt departure hadn’t happened or didn’t matter. But then Maria wasn’t much of a people person on the best of days. She didn’t mind if they left her alone or invited her out to lunch. “I have Barney.”_ _

__“Do you?”_ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

__“Is that enough?”_ _

__“Why wouldn’t it be? He’s all I had for years.”_ _

__“If you say so.”_ _

__“You keep saying that. As if you don’t believe me.”_ _

__She doesn’t point out that he doesn’t have the best track record with these things. “Well, then. I should go to bed. I have a six am flight.”_ _

__“Goodnight.”_ _

__“Goodnight, Clint.”_ _

__He drinks a fourth beer, then a fifth. The buzz is starting up in earnest so he grabs something to eat. He doesn’t have much. He didn’t have the focus to buy much. He pulls out some stuff for sandwiches and managed to make one that doesn’t look the least bit appetizing. He eats it anyway. He forced himself to eat earlier with Maria, and he could do it again. Things were going to be better, right? He would fix things with Bobbi. There was no need to not take of himself as if there wasn’t anything to live for._ _

__The phone rings again. He reaches for it mindlessly as he opens the last bottle of beer. He stares at the screen. At Bobbi’s name. Swallowing thickly, he answers the phone._ _

__“Clint?” she says hesitantly._ _

__“Hi,” he repeats. He swallows again and runs his hand over his face. Fourteen hours in, and he can’t handle it already. How will he survive a month? It has to get easier somewhere along the line. “I hear you’re leaving in the morning. Natasha called.”_ _

__“Yeah. Um, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It seems silly that I’m—well, if I’m leaving, there’s no point in you staying in SoHo. If you wanted the house. We’ll be gone awhile. If you want.” She trails off awkwardly, something that happens so rarely Clint has forgotten what it sounds like._ _

__“You don’t want to fill out the paperwork, do you?”_ _

__“I don’t have the time,” she says._ _

__“You want to know what people are saying.”_ _

__“I was trying to be nice. And okay, I want to know what people are saying. We’re one of the longest marriages in SHIELD.”_ _

__“I’m not SHIELD anymore.”_ _

__“You could be.”_ _

__Oh, he’s not having this conversation again. He had it with Barney twice already today and Maria too. “That would be nice. The house I mean,” he stumbles over his words. “If it won’t make you feel uncomfortable.”_ _

__“It’s your house too.”_ _

__He can’t remember the last time they had a conversation so awkward. Maybe never. But then they never broke up before. “Thanks,” he says for lack of anything better to say. He glances at the clock and hesitates. “Um, Natasha said you have a six am flight. I’m guessing you should go to bed soon.”_ _

__“Um, oh, yeah. I should. Well, goodnight Clint.”_ _

__“Goodnight.”_ _

__He stares at the phone for a good hour after she hangs up._ _


	2. baby we're guilty wherever we are

The last thing Bobbi wants to deal with when they touch down in Debrecen is more murder. It’s midnight in Hungary, and the hotel wasn’t booked right. There’s no SHIELD safe house around here. They don’t bother trying to get another hotel. They change into their suits in the middle of an alley and shoulder their luggage. Spies travel light. Bobbi has two duffel bags, one of which is almost entirely weapons. She hides as many of them as she can on her and stuff the mostly empty duffel into the full one. This mission doesn’t require suits or professional wear. She has her bag stuffed with basics only. It’s not that heavy as she heaves it over her shoulders and follows Natasha and Hill to the first place they ought to look. When they come back, SHIELD might have dealt with the hotel.

What they don’t expect to find—and what they definitely didn’t hope to find—was three more dead children, naked and dirty, their faces contorted with fear even in death. They look like they’ve been dead several days. Hill gags and puts her hand to her mouth. Bobbi leads her into the hallway and coaxes her into helping search the rest of the house, although they studied it for several minutes before they entered and even peeks in the windows showed no signs of anyone living there. Meanwhile Natasha places the call to SHIELD. 

They find rooms full of desks replete with papers. Checks for donations to keep this so called running orphanage running. Names of people involved. Some of them seem like aliases. Some of the names are known to Bobbi. Hill texts Natasha downstairs and informs her the people responsible for this might be back. That’s certainly implied in the way everything is left out. Instead of taking the papers, they take photos of them. Natasha joins them after they finish the third room. “We’re to leave the bodies here,” she whispers unhappily. “If we think they might come back, they don’t want to do something that would spook them. Why would they leave the bodies if they’re staying here?”

Bobbi doesn’t answer the question. It’s rhetorical, she assumes. It’s hardly the first time they’ve seen dead bodies where people are working. It’s the criminal underworld, after all, and they’re hardly known for sensibility, decency, or basic human respect. 

Just before they finish searching the house, a SHIELD car pulls up and slides to a stop two doors down. An agent peeks their head around the corner of the staircase and Natasha waves to them. The girl comes into the light, looking far too young and breakable. Bobbi hated dealing with the younger agents. Sometimes they came to the agency with enough cynicism to get them through, as no one who worked for SHIELD ever had a good life, but a lot of times they were still broken little kids at heart. The girl seems like that too, but you never knew. 

Hill flashes her badge and the girl flashes hers. “We’re done,” Natasha says, closing the door to the last room behind them after checking to make sure everything looked as it did before they entered. “We should go.”

“I’ve been informed your issue with the hotel has been worked out,” the girl says with a heavy accent. “My partners are setting up next door. It is an empty house. We held it when this house was flagged. We will call you if anything changes.”

They thank her and leave.

–

SHIELD has surprisingly sprung for them all to have separate rooms in a row. Maybe since the nature of their mission was so dark they were being nice. Bobbi’s more concerned with how they swung it. Given that Debrecen gets a lot of tourists and it’s summer, she would think hotels would be pretty full. But it’s late summer, and maybe people are getting ready for new school years and settling in for cooler weather to come. It’s been years since Bobbi’s done something approaching normal so she doesn’t really know. She skipped grades and worked through summers, and her last vacation feels like forever ago. She doesn’t remember what people do in the summers.

It’s only nine in the evening back home. Part of her wants to call Clint. Ask him if he went back to the house. If he’s doing okay. Past situations make her think he isn’t doing all that well. She does miss him, and she wants what’s best for him, and she wants him to be okay. But more than that, she wants herself to be okay, and well, she’s not.

If she calls her mother, she will be told that she gave up too easily, that marriage is forever, that her duty is to her husband. And Bobbi believes all of that to a degree. But it’s similar to the reasons she left home all those years ago and never looked back—things were bad and they never changed. Bobbi was sick of things never changing. Her parents were more interested in themselves and their issues, and they shouldn’t have had a child at all. And Clint did the same thing he always did—he avoided the problem even though he knew the solution. So she left because she had to live with herself.

Bobbi stares down at her phone and sighs to herself. She has already showered—odd that she missed Clint during it, until she remembered they spent six nights in this hotel back in his freelance days when she was supposed to be arresting him and not wrapping her thighs around him as he entered her—and she’s in her pajamas. She’s cleaned her gun and brushed her hair and set out her weapons. She’s organized the photos, unpacked her clothes, put alarms on her window. It’s three in the morning and she’s not tired, just worn down and lonely.

When she came here with Clint in his freelance days, it was only because they were close to Hungary. Clint took care of the reservations and murmured them to her as he left, his face half shrouded in the darkness. “I’ll see you in a couple days,” he said against her throat and he kissed up her neck and to her lips.

She should have stopped him from leaving. He was going after someone dangerous, more dangerous than he was at the time. She’d been in the shower worrying, wondering if she should go after him on day two of their reservation, when he’d finally stumbled in with a black eye, bruised ribs, and a bullet hole in his leg. But he just walked into the shower easily, and when she told him he really shouldn’t get his bandage wet, he just kissed her with a fierce desperation. 

Shower sex is awkward on the best of days, but she hadn’t cared. She never did care when one of them was injured. They’d had sex in all sorts of places—supply closets, cleaning closets, locker rooms, beaches, swimming pools, offices, someone’s backyard, the parking lot of a high school. They had sex often. It took up all their time together. In retrospect really they shouldn’t have married. They spoke some but they didn’t know each other as well as they should have. But she was desperate to have him, and things worked okay for a while. Nine years. Nine years of marriage wasn’t bad, she guesses. It could have been worse. By all rights, they probably should have divorced years ago. The first three years of their marriage were rocky at best. But they loved each other. It had been enough to push through the bad days. 

Bobbi wonders if they’ll be able to do it again. She isn’t even sure if she hopes so or not. But there are tears on her face.

–

Natasha wakes up bright and early, seven am Hungarian time. She slept surprisingly well. It still shocks her how much better the deprogramming made her sleep. She can rest now, and she likes to take advantage of it. The hotel bed is nice, and she’s full of energy so she bounces onto the feet, washes up, orders room service, and sits down at the desk to get started on examining the photos they took last night. At seven thirty, the room service arrives and so does Hill, who’s already clutching a coffee. She yawns as she greets Natasha and sinks into the chair next to her. 

At eight, Natasha wonders if they ought to go get Bobbi. It’s not like her to sleep late. But when she mentions this out loud, Hill shakes her head. “I heard her crying at four in the morning. I don’t think she’ll be up and at ‘em today. Given her a little more time to rest.”

At nine, Bobbi knocks on the door. She doesn’t look very well rested at all. Her eyes are red and her damp hair is thrown into a ponytail. She’s wearing her glasses and sweatpants with her pajama top. She smiles a little hesitantly and says, “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

Hill smiles and says, “There’s some cheese and bread left if you want some.” 

Natasha orders more coffee, tea for her, and some pastries. It’s mostly to give her hands something to do. Bobbi’s hands are white-knuckled, clutching her phone and a sheaf of papers to her chest, and when they reach out to accept the last cup of coffee in the pot from Hill, they shake, sloshing the liquid. Natasha swallows thickly and adds another order for the full breakfast sampler. She tells herself it’s because they’ll be hungry as they sift through the information, but it’s really because in that moment she realizes Bobbi’s lost weight. Her hands seems skeletal. Things have been bad for a while, but she never showed any sign of that at work. But then Natasha hadn’t gotten close to her in weeks.

Bobbi eats only a little. Some bread and cheese, a slice of mortadella, one pastry, four cups of coffee and two cups of tea. It takes her almost an hour to eat the food, but she gulps down the drinks as though she’s dying of thirst. Crying has a way of dehydrating you. When they finally settle down into work, she misses things she normally wouldn’t and her mind keeps wandering away from the topic. She keeps touching her finger as if she’s wondering where her engagement and weddings rings are. She never wears them during a mission but that doesn’t stop her from seeming to panic when she doesn’t feel them.

Natasha wants to ask, but Hill breaks first. Just past noon, she tosses down her pen and frowns at Bobbi. “You aren’t okay.”

Bobbi looks up at her. The bags under her eyes are bigger and darker the longer she’s awake. Natasha can’t remember her ever biting her nails before, but today they are bitten to the quick. Her lips are bitten raw too. Natasha reaches into her bag and hands Bobbi some lip balm; she looks at it uncomprehendingly for a moment before taking it with a barely audible “thanks.” She smears some on and hands it back to Natasha, her fingers trembling so much she nearly drops it. Natasha and Hill share a glance but they don’t say anything else. Neither of them are sure what to say. They turn back to the papers and dig in again.

At four they’ve eaten lunch—well, Hill and Natasha have eaten lunch, Bobbi had managed only a bowl of soup and some bread—and they’re surprisingly done with the papers earlier than they thought they’d be. A forensic accountant will have to go through the financials. They can do it, but it’s not imperative, and Fury’s orders were to send these sorts of things back to the forensic team set aside for this. 

Natasha goes to fax the papers over. When she comes back, Hill is gathering everything up and surreptitiously watching Bobbi out of the corner of her eye. Bobbi is rocking back and forth on the chair and biting her thumb. When she spots Natasha, she jumps up with a surprising amount of energy. “Let’s go to the next place.”

–

Bobbi does a lot better outside of the hotel. They check on a house that one of the other agents flagged but didn’t have time to check on a previous mission. The house is currently empty—it’s late enough in the day that it’s possible they’re attempting to sell the children. As prostitutes or for slave labor, Natasha doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know. She focuses on methodically searching the house. There isn’t anything that would help them with the poison, so it’s mostly a useless search. They find out who is running the house, a man known as Nicola Mancini. All SHIELD seems to know is that that’s not his real name, and he’s not Italian at all, but he seems to love to pretend. He’s not known for engaging in child prostitution, and he apparently only takes children he has been paid to take or who are unwanted. Infanticide is high in Hungary. But some people don’t kill the children. They just leave them out to starve to death in dumpsters or forests where they won’t be heard. It would be kinder for them to die than be found and worked to death by Mancini, but the world isn’t that kind.

Bobbi finds the only useful thing in the house, a letter asking if the sender could interest Mancini in an easier way to get rid of unnecessary or useless children. Mancini usually just snaps their necks and buries them in the back from what they can tell. Hill found some child-sized bones in the patch of grass behind the house and investigated. 

They photograph the letter but Bobbi spends a good deal of time studying it. “This is handcrafted stationary,” she says finally. “That’s pretty expensive. Especially since it’s personalized.” She holds it up to the light.

“There’s a watermark,” Hill says with surprise.

Natasha takes a picture of it too. When she checks the photo to makes sure it came out alright, she realizes she’s seen that logo before. “That’s the Dubiki crime family logo.”

“Dubiki?” Hill asks.

“From my understanding, it’s a surname that means from Dubica in Poland. It’s not a real family, and I doubt any of them are actually named that. It’s not even really a crime family. It’s a group of loosely connected people with similar motivations.” Natasha studies the image again as she thinks. “The members are constantly changing, but no one I knew four years ago could have created the poison. They might be persuaded to sell it along though.”

Hill puts in a call to SHIELD to tell them about it. Meanwhile, Natasha and Bobbi gather their equipment and move into their car. Hill doesn’t come out immediately, so they wait, and Natasha can’t help but ask, “Why were you so upset this morning?”

“I’m not upset,” Bobbi says hollowly.

“You’re chewing your nails again.”

Bobbi looks down at her hands and seems surprised. “I haven’t done that since I was fifteen.”

“You’re not okay.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“We aren’t friends, Widow,” Bobbi snaps. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Hill chooses that moment to climb into the car, pausing of a second at Bobbi’s tone and the way Natasha reels back as if she’s been slapped. “Is everything okay?” Hill asks mildly.

“We’re fine,” Natasha manages. She turns the car on and drives back to the hotel on autopilot. Her brain can’t seem to focus on anything but Bobbi’s words. She hadn’t even called Natasha by name. And her face had shown a pure hatred that makes Natasha want to cry and lash out at the same time.

When they get back to the hotel, Natasha has chosen to lash out. She slams the door to her room shut and stays there stewing until Hill knocks on her door and doesn’t stop knocking until she answers it. “You had to have known,” she says without preamble, “that you might have been a factor in Barton and Morse’s relationship problems.”

“No I didn’t know that,” Natasha snaps. “Why would I? We were all friends, weren’t we?”

“I’m friends with Barton,” Hill says, her tone switching from having no inflection to being intentionally mild. “I don’t think he’d bring me around his wife if I tried to kill her.”

“That’s not a problem anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

Before today, she would have said yes. Now she hesitates and looks down at the floor. “I thought we were friends.”

“When Barton met me for lunch before we left, he asked me a hundred questions about you. Like he couldn’t get enough of hearing about you. And he’s done stuff like that before.”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“No. Worse. He’s obsessed with you. He’s only just realized it. He loves Morse. I don’t doubt that. But he’s obsessed with you. You were his first friend, his partner. He moped about you when you were in Denmark. He went through a lot of effort to save your life. Maybe Morse could have forgiven it once or twice, but how can you be in love with a man obsessed with another woman?”

“I didn’t want that.”

“Yes, you did.”

Natasha tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling. Yes, she did. Years ago. She played Clint for a fool and he fell for it. Even in the early days of her imprisonment, she kept playing with him. She created this situation, and she shares the blame. If Bobbi cannot forgive that… well, she wouldn’t either, would she? If she were in Bobbi’s place, she would have gotten rid of the competition a long time ago. She would have forbidden Clint. Except Clint is not easily forbidden, so what would have happened? He might understand; he might rail against her. Bobbi had chosen to do nothing at all and accept it, even making Natasha feel welcome. And Clint still bore his obsession. The obsession Natasha nurtured and wanted. “I can’t undo what’s done.”

“No,” Hill agrees. “I wish I had a suggestion for you. It’s not wise to leave Barton alone, but it’s not wise for you to continue on. Maybe you shouldn’t talk to him anymore.”

Natasha closes her eyes. “I don’t believe Bobbi was faking a friendship with me.”

“No. But that friendship was contingent on Barton. She views it as him choosing you. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant. She has a right to feel that way. She’s losing her husband and you’re at least one of the causes from what Barton told me. He’s finally figured out you two can’t go on like this, and he wants Morse’s love more than he wants your friendship.”

“I think I want to be alone for a while. Are we going anywhere tonight?” 

“They have a midnight auction for children according to one of our sources. We’ll check out one of the businesses then. Meet us in my room at eleven thirty.”

Natasha sinks into the bed when she leaves and cries. She’d lost Bobbi’s friendship over something she created years before she met her, before she even tried to kill her. It was always going to happen. She knew Clint. She knew her hot and cold attitude would do nothing to dissuade him. She knew every time she opened up to him she was deepening the ties between them. She knew it, but only subconsciously, unaware that she was imploding her new life. 

She reaches for her phone. It’s afternoon in New York. She’ll call Clint and they’ll talk it out and it’ll be fine. 

He doesn’t answer the phone. She doesn’t leave a message.

It’s probably for the best.

–

Clint wakes up thinking now’s as good of a time as any to go back to SHIELD. He’ll probably have to serve out of the probation, and Fury will drown him in therapists, but Bobbi’s not there and he’ll have time to settle. He spends four hours psyching himself up. In the end, however, he just calls Fury instead of going into SHIELD. He can still get into the building since he wasn’t fired. Going through reception and people’s stares sounds terrible though, so he closes the door seconds after he opens and chooses to call Fury instead.

“Four months, Barton,” he says instead of hello. “I didn’t expect you to last that long.”

“This was a bad idea,” Clint decides out loud and goes to hang up the phone—why didn’t he call from his new cell phone and not the land line at the house? Fury might not have known it was him at first.

Fury’s silence on the other end is enough to make Clint put the phone back to his ear. “Okay, so I need therapy. We knew that.”

Fury doesn’t laugh, but Clint imagines he’s smirking at least. “Dr. Anderson has a few hours free this afternoon.”

“I only need one.”

“No, you don’t. Get your ass in.”

So at two in the afternoon, Clint arrives at SHIELD. Fury’s left him a pass that gets him where he needs to go at the receptionist’s desk. The woman—he thinks her name is Rosemary but he rarely ever came in through this entrance—smiles politely at him and says, “Welcome back, Agent Barton,” like anyone really missed him.

Melinda May jumps on him halfway to the psych ward and shoves him into a wall. “Where the hell did you go, Barton? And why are you back?”

“I missed your bitchy face of course,” he snarks, pushing her off him. She bares her teeth at him a little and some young-looking junior agents scurry around them. They scurry faster after she punches him in the shoulder.

She gets right up in his face and hisses, “I found paperwork for a single house in Bobbi’s lab. Why is that?”

“We’re separated,” he hisses back. “Temporarily.” The words haven’t gotten easier to say.

Melinda shoves him back into the wall. Question answered, she walks down the hall. Clint debates running after her just to trip her, but he hasn’t been training and he doubts he can take her. He settles for sticking his tongue out at her back and rubbing shoulders.

Someone passes by and greets him. He mutters a greeting back but he doesn’t look to see who it is.

Dr. Anderson is a hunching, gray man. He must be at least eighty at this point, but he’s calm and collected. Clint spends three hours with him. They mostly walk through the last four months. At the end, the man gives him a lollipop. He always does. He seems to think the agents need a little whimsy, and no one ever minds. Clint accepts his, makes another appointment during a lunch hour and promises to buy Dr. Anderson a cheese pizza. He won’t buy it for himself, and the cafeteria won’t provide anything that greasy. Clint doesn’t mind buying him one. There’s a pizzeria near the subway station that makes a sixteen inch pie with eight different cheeses. One slice is a heart attack waiting to happen, but Dr. Anderson is pretty healthy. 

When he leaves the psych ward, he goes straight for the entrance. Once again, he’s lost the courage to go up to Fury but it’s a moot point anyway. McKay intercepts him on the third floor and drags him up to Fury’s office. 

McKay almost immediately leaves. Clint waits ten minutes impatiently then settles on having his lollipop. He’s almost done with it—quite a feat given Dr. Anderson insists on buying those rainbow ones as big as you hand—when Fury finally enters. He looks haggard and tired. Probably over the child murders. That tends to drag the whole agency down. “Am I going to have to convince you to come back or not?” Fury asks wearily.

He intends to drag this conversation out, but Fury looks far too tired for that and Clint mostly feels sorry for him. “Am I going to have to serve the probation?”

“I’m knocking you down two clearance levels, and I’m keeping you close.”

Clint resists the urge to stick his tongue out. He’s not inclined to be treated like a green junior agent again. “Whatever.”

Fury almost smirks like he knows what Clint is thinking. He probably does. “Go to medical. They need an updated physical.”

–

After his physical, which contains a lot of awkward questions from Georgina, a friend of Bobbi’s, he ends up in McKay’s office. McKay tries to walk him through the contracts and gets frustrated when Clint waves him off. The contracts haven’t changed in the fifty plus years SHIELD has been working. Once every ten years or so they might add a clause but it mostly stays the same. Clint studied it so much the first time he signed that he still remembers much to his surprise. When McKay gives a pop quiz on the contract, they both are shocked when Clint can recite the clause word for word. But at least McKay accepts that he doesn’t really need to go through the contracts again. He should have given it to HR to do anyway. Clint is under the impression that Fury’s keeping an eye on him.

Dr. Anderson apparently gave him the okay to work the milder missions, so McKay hands him his badge—a new one, this one doesn’t have the end broken off from an unplanned breaking and entering, and it’s only one clearance level below where he was when he left—and sends him off to find out who exactly the woman who almost killed Nick Fury is. They have a picture of her, a side profile showing long dark hair and pale skin, her mouth seemingly twisted up. She seems to be running from someone. Not SHIELD—there weren’t any agents nearby but Nick. The bullet missed him by such a distance that it would seem someone deliberately missed. So this wasn’t such an important mission so much as busywork. Fury doesn’t expel a lot of effort finding the people who try to kill him. They usually show up again some other time and he can get them then. Still Clint isn’t going to intentionally screw up this mission.

Her profile has been run through SHIELD’s database and they’ve come up with some likely profiles. Clint carts in the files back to his house, realizing about twenty minutes in that he can’t handle the stares, and goes through them. He still has contacts so he calls everyone he can think of. There are names on the list of suspects he knows—Heather Harris, Luisa Sanchez, Gayle Forester, Tina Leon, Marina Diaz, Elizabeth Gage, and a woman only known as The Witching Hour, which Clint never understood. He dismisses them all from all the list. Heather Harris mostly does corporate espionage, occasionally stepping on government agencies, and it’s unlikely she’d be stupid enough to try. Luisa Sanchez usually stays in South America, and one of his contacts has her in Brazil at the time of the shooting. Gayle Forester hasn’t been seen or heard from in months, and Tina Leon is too short to be the woman in the picture. Elizabeth Gage is more top heavy than the woman in the picture. And Marina Diaz is too dark skinned. The Witching Hour’s picture had been flagged at an ATM in San Francisco at the same time of the shooting. She’s unlikely in all sorts of ways—bullets weren’t her style, her hair was cropped short in the picture, and she was likely on her way to somewhere in South East Asia where she had friends.

The ones he doesn’t know he can’t dismiss as easily but he narrows down the list. Leopard doesn’t seem to use bullets either. Sara March has a fuller figure. Lindsey Desmond, aka Waterfall, would more likely steal information from Fury than attempt to shoot him. Courtney Yves is a possibility although she’s new enough to the game that threatening SHIELD would be a foolish move. Martina Poole is apparently selling information to MI5. Or MI6; his contact wasn’t sure. 

The phone rings. Clint picks it up. “Hello.”

He should have checked the caller ID. When Bobbi says, “Hello, Clint,” his heart just about jumps in his chest.

“You know anything about Martina Poole or Courtney Yves?” he asks. An actual conversation with her seems beyond him right now. His heart has gone into overdrive. But work is safe. Work is something they’ve always been able to talk about even when they were fighting.

“Hmm. Yves is new and she’s not that experienced. Rumor has it she’s being trained by the mob. Poole is selling information to the British government. She’s hoping for leniency. She worked exclusively for a group in illegal trade of parts of endangered animals.”

“So she probably wouldn’t shoot at Fury, right?”

“No. Are you back at work?”

“I went to see Dr. Anderson. I got dragged back.”

“I saw the list SHIELD complied. I wouldn’t pin it on any of them.”

“Those were the only names I had left.”

“I’d suggest you look further. I’ve heard rumors it was an unknown. Possibly even HYDRA.”

HYDRA never did give up. They haven’t accomplished much of anything in the last sixty years but that’s never stopped them. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” There’s a tense pause then she says, “I wanted to know if you were in the house.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“I never finished the paperwork.”

“Mel found it by the way. She accosted me on my way to therapy.”

“I wasn’t hiding it. I left in my office this morning. Our flight was delayed an hour. I thought I could finish it.”

“Did you want me to finish it for you?” He was the one leaving the house, he could sign the papers for her.

“If you want.”

Silence again. He doesn’t know what to say.

She spares him. “How was Dr. Anderson?”

“I’m bringing him a cheese pizza next time.”

“So there will be a next time.”

“I’m not going to lose you,” he says fiercely. “I can deal with a lot. I can’t take that.”

She says nothing for a while. “I do love you, Clint. I hope you don’t doubt that.”

He does but he doesn’t say that out loud. It’s unnecessary and Dr. Anderson seems to think he’s forcing himself to feel that way. It’s easier than thinking she loves him. “I want to fix this,” he says instead.

“I know.”

More awkward silences. He wants her to say she wants to fix this too, but he won’t ask her, and she doesn’t say it. “How’s your child murders coming?”

“More bodies. A little information. I have to go. We’re searching somewhere else tonight.”

“Right.”

She hangs up. He stares at his phone for a moment. The call screen closes. He sees he has a missed message from Natasha, and he lingers over the return call button. But he doesn’t know what to say to her, and it’s been hours, and anyway, if she’s with Bobbi and they’re leaving soon he doesn’t want to tie her up. He turns off the phone and goes back to the papers.

–

Five more children dead. Bobbi debates calling Clint back. She meant to tell him she was in the hotel where they spent a few days. She meant to tell him she wished she could hug him. The initial gratefulness of their separation has faded and now she’s missing him. She doesn’t miss the awkward silences or the loneliness that was defining their marriage these past few months, but she does miss him. Misses his stupid jokes when she’s upset. Misses the way he wraps his arms around her, misses the way he presses kisses against her temple when she curls into him. She could use a hug right now. No one has ever made her feel better the way he does. 

She curls up on the bed. It’s natural to miss someone you’ve spent so long with, she tells herself. She shouldn’t call him again. No contact for the rest of the month at least. She wanted that clean break. She needs it. She knows she does. It’s just not going to be that easy. She’s been with Clint for twelve years, nine of them married. Her last relationship before him lasted all of nine months, maybe. She’s not used to breaking up with someone who was such a big part of her life.

She falls into a fitful sleep. It’s late, and she’s beyond exhausted, emotionally and physically drained, but the sleep doesn’t come easy. She dreams of a dozen and one things mixed together. Of Clint’s suicide attempts, of dead children, of a freshly mutilated body she found in the catacombs of France when she was chasing a suspect some five years ago. She dreams of her mother and father fighting. Of the humiliation she felt when she walked into her lab while she was working on her thesis and found her experiment destroyed. 

She isn't used to dreaming about failure. That's Clint's territory. She has always taken a different road. Focusing on failure has ruined missions before and made her doubt decisions she wouldn't usually doubt. So these twisted dreams, when they finally wake her, make her feel shaky in a way she's never felt before.

So her experiment was destroyed. She hadn't cared too much then, not beyond the initial humiliation and anger. She found a way to salvage her experiment and finish it on time. So children are dead. She needs to keep her head on straight so more don't die. She can't help the dead in any other way. She couldn't save that poor corpse in the catacombs but she found their killer. Exhausted nightmarish dreaming isn't helping her.

She knows what's likely to be. Clint telling her he had no intention of giving her up felt strange. She wanted to argue with him, tell him that's exactly what he's been doing these past months. But that was unfair. She hadn't said anything about her loneliness. She hadn't tried to tell him he needed to pay her a little more attention. It felt wrong when he was spinning from Buck Chisholm and Jacques Duquesne. Things in the aftermath had been strange. Hans Pederson stepped down from his companies, making his dementia common knowledge. Natasha had come back to SHIELD. Hill had become her new partner instead of her handler, and she acquitted herself with merit. She's capable of handling Natasha's tendency towards unnecessary violence. But even as Bobbi saw all of this, she was more than aware of the absence of Clint. He was not friends with their fellow agents but his presence was one of the base's oldest. The junior agents always hoped to get him when they were in trouble since he always went soft on them, genially pointing out he problem and how they could do better next time. Agents loved having him train with them. His natural affinity for always hitting his target caused jealousy at first but people are long since used to it. So they train with him instead. His mere presence is enough for people to try harder in aiming.

The secret is of course Clint gives himself plenty of time to make his shot unless he really really can't waste even one second. He doesn't shoot blindly like some of the younger agents who idolize him do when they're mimicking him. He's ultimately very aware of his surroundings. She remembers him the first time she saw him after the bomb had ruined what was left of his hearing. Ear problems cause balance problems and seeing him bumping into things was so strange. He had looked up at her so miserably she hadn't even thought about the way she reached for him, cradling him against her shoulder. He buried his face in her neck and did not cry until she told him he had the right to cry. It wasn't until years later that between his father and the circus he had long since learned tears weren't well tolerated. But he unlearned that soon enough thankfully. He had a lot of things to cry over.

Her phone rings. She wants it to be Clint. She wants to throw it against the wall. She answers instead. It's her mother. She hasn't spoken to her mother in years. Every birthday and Christmas they exchange gifts the other one probably won't like and carefully worded letters. It's the only contact she can manage. There is little but bitterness in that relationship.

"Your father is in critical condition in the hospital," her mother says flatly. "It's his heart. I always told him he shouldn't have eggs every morning."

"That's a myth, mother."

"You sound half asleep, Barbara."

"I'm in Eastern Europe. I probably won't make it home anytime soon."

Her mother harrumphs. It's the usual noise she makes around Bobbi. Adaline never had any idea what to do with a daughter so different from her. Nowadays it's because she doesn't understand why scientists travel. One day Bobbi might just tell her, just to see what happens. Her mother would be the one in the hospital then.

Bobbi thinks she ought to be upset. Her father is ill after all. He isn't that old. Maybe in his late sixties. But all she manage is a vague concern. She hasn't had any contact from her father since she cut things off with her parents. The letters may have been signed with "mother and father" but they all knew he had nothing to do with it. He probably never spares Bobbi much thought. She hadn't been wanted on her father's part and he wasn't cut out for being a father anyway. "I'll see if Clint can go see him."

Her mother harrumphs again. She never approved of her son in law or of her husband taking more to his son in law than their daughter. But it never bothered Bobbi too much. It bothered Clint a little. He loved her too much to want to be close to a man who hurt her so much.

"He should be at home," Bobbi says. "And dad will be glad to see Clint." The only thing her father had going for him was his refusal to accept ‘father’ as a normal day to day term to use. He insisted on dad. Mother insisted on mother. How those two got married was beyond her.

Oh right. They married because that's what you did when you got knocked up. Women couldn't even get credit cards on their own back then. This was before women's lib. Not that that changed her mother's mind. "You know he'll like seeing Clint. You should get him on the house phone."

"You don't want to tell him yourself?" Her mother says with interest.

The last person on earth to find out she and Clint are separated will be her mother. She will tell every last intimate detail of their marriage to someone they're hunting before she tells her mother. "I want to back to sleep mother. It's the middle of the night and I need to be up early."

Another harrumph. "I will call Clinton. But you must be able to request a couple days."

"I'll try. We're short staffed. Tell dad I love him and to do what the doctors say." Does that sound like something a concerned, dutiful daughter would say?

Her mother harrumphs yet again but this time seems more amused. "We can hope I suppose. But he's already tried to leave the hospital even as he was passing out."

With that they say their goodbyes and Bobbi rolls over in bed. She focuses on what she thinks the meeting between Clint and her father will sound like. Clint will try to go since her father is so ill. Fury will let him, undoubtedly. He always lets agents go to ill or dying or dead family members if they want. Bobbi doesn't want to. When Clint requests the days off Nick will probably call to ask her why she isn't requesting the days too. But he has her therapy records. He will know why. Bobbi spent too much of her childhood resenting her father and his affairs and his neglect and whatever he did. She cannot dredge up much worry.

She sleeps again and this time she does not dream.

–

When she wakes, there's a message from Fury. He tells her she could go home if she wanted. Clint left on a SHIELD plane late last night. Fury notes that he eliminated every suspect. Whether he notes this because he knows of the conversation she had with him last night—a distinct possibility since their phones are bugged—or because every agent goes on high alert when someone tries to kill Fury and he likes to inform his most trusted agents what's going on. But Clint came up with a couple new suspects and he will work his way back up to New York from Georgia. Fury sounds as relieved as he ever does. It’s hard to function with a giant target on your 

Bobbi calls Fury back. He doesn't answer—it's the middle of the night in New York although that doesn't mean much with him—so she leaves a message telling him if her father dies she'll go home for the funeral but not a second before. Then she calls Clint. She leaves a message apologizing for throwing him to her parents and asking him not to tell them they're separated. Not that he will likely tell them. She just wanted to remind him.

She hopes the fact that he didn't answer means he's fast asleep. He needs it. Would SHIELD give him more sleeping pills? It was a common prescription among the field agents. If no one had told anyone he abused them. She couldn’t remember if someone had. She hopes therapy will help with that.

She prepares for another day. Last night, Natasha had been stiff, and Hill had been stiffer as she ended up between them. Bobbi reminds herself to apologize to Natasha. She hadn’t meant to lash out, and she didn’t mean it anyway. For now, she takes a lazy morning. They had a late night, and they had nowhere to be immediately. They searched two places last night. More dead children but no new information. Bobbi isn’t surprised. They were lucky to find so much so soon. And even that maybe a dead end.

Debrecen is a tourist town in part, and the hotel serves American breakfast food too. Bobbi orders half Hungarian food and half American and two pots of coffee, and she throws herself into some yoga while she waits. She isn’t nearly well rested enough and she’s exactly calm, but she tries to force herself into it. When the food comes, she spends a leisurely hour reading a book she packed for plane rides. She dozes off a little on the couch in front of the television where she’s watching a morning news reel, and she drinks more coffee when she wakes. When it hits noon, she dresses in jeans and a plain t-shirt and tucks weapons on her. She meets Hill and Natasha in the lobby. On the surface they look like tourists.

House number three has living children which makes everything more difficult. When they enter, disarming the cameras and sneaking past the two men in the corner smoking cigarettes and not paying any attention, a child blinks up at them and silently points to the next room. Natasha drags the one man on duty out to the backyard while Hill calls SHIELD and Bobbi secures the children. The children just stare at her with large wide eyes, obeying her commands like their lives depended on this. They likely did. For now, it’s a good thing, so Bobbi ignores the welling sadness and anger in her. 

The children are kept in small room off the side of the house, away from just about everything. There’s no window and rows of unwashed mats doubling as beds without so much as an inch of space in between them. There are thirty children in all, half boys and half girls, and their faces are dirty and thin, their eyes sad, and they look undernourished and too pale under the harsh lights. They’re all wearing white linen, and they are silent as they watch her.

SHIELD comes soon enough. But before they do, some of the men involved in this bullshit come back to the house with potential clients, and Bobbi does have fun breaking a few bones. She doesn’t usually enjoy it, but children are almost always the exception.

They still don’t flinch.

Agents come to sweep away the mess. The children are gently carted into a van and taken off. They’ll go through medical and psych will try to help them, and SHIELD will try to find their families if they can. Bobbi doubts they’ll be able to, so the children will go to various places. SHIELD rescues so many children they basically have their own foster system at this point. Several children they rescue even grow up to become foster parents, hoping to help these kids since they have similar experiences. The masterminds and potential clients are taken away in cuffs, loaded into another van. SHIELD does not have due process. There will be no judge and jury, just long endless days in prison. If they aren’t deemed better off dead.

There is another letter from the Dubiki crime family—and do they really need to have their own watermarked paper? But there is no poison and no dead children, so they find nothing else for their investigation. This is a Hungarian based operation only it seems so all they can add is that the Dubiki family knows quite a lot about the various illegal activities involving children going on in the world.

After this, they can all agree that they would rather go back to the hotel and rest, but they know they can’t. So it’s off to the next house, another SHIELD car following them. Just in case, just because there was an extra one waiting. They need it. Another four dead children, and those who run this operation trying to scatter in the wind. But Bobbi and Natasha are the best at what they do, and Hill has no issue shooting child molesters in the back, and they don’t make it far. There are two living children, and the rest of them they learn are long gone, buried in the backyard or sold on. They find another Dubiki letter but little else.

House five is much the same. House number six has been cleared out. House seven currently has no children, not that that stops them from arresting the people responsible for the ring. That’s all there is in Hungary. They will leave in the morning, if any of them can get up. It’s taken only nine hours to go through them all, but who knows what they’ll see when they sleep.

–

Natasha takes an hour long shower and it doesn’t make her feel any cleaner. She orders a bottle of gin from the room service menu and a cheese platter to mop it up because even she needs to eat with her alcohol. It’s not even eleven yet and she woke up late but she’s already exhausted. Yet she won’t sleep. She knows it. Right now she won’t even try. She has broken so many bones today, and she snapped the neck of the man who had the audacity to try to sell her a child to “work her aggressions out on.” She isn’t calm enough to sleep.

Halfway through the gin bottle—and one cracker, two grapes, and one bite sized piece of cheese—someone knocks on her door. She doesn’t want to answer it, but she knows it’s probably Hill or Bobbi, so she calls, “Come in!” in the least annoyed voice she can manage. The two of them have cards to her room, like she has them to theirs. It’s just courtesy to knock.

It’s Bobbi. She’s freshly showered. This morning she was looking better, but now the dark circles under eyes are more prominent. Natasha bristles a little at her own concern. “Can we talk?” Bobbi asks.

“If we have to.”

Natasha recognizes the look Bobbi gives her. It’s one that says “hey, it’s no skin off my back if you want to play it that way.” She changes her mind. “Come in then.”

“I wanted to apologize for snapping at you yesterday.”

“There’s nothing to apologize over.”

Bobbi almost rolls her eyes. Almost, not quite. It ends up looking like she’s rolling her eyes to the heavens. Maybe she is. Natasha has no idea how religious she might be. She doesn’t appear very religious. But chances are she was raised as something.

“It’s not a big deal,” Natasha insists.

“Clint’s barely spoken to me since he quit. But god he could talk about you.”

Natasha doesn’t flinch. Barely.

“Or he wanted to hear about you. Talking about you would have required him to talk to me.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“I encouraged it.”

“Not recently.”

“Were things that bad?”

Bobbi plays with the edge of her shirt. “I never said anything to him. I should have. But honestly, I could barely ask him if he wanted to go out to dinner without him forgetting about me halfway through the question. It wasn’t that bad in the beginning. He just got worse. It got worse. I didn’t really realize how unhappy I was until I told him I wanted to leave.” Bobbi swallows thickly. “Honestly, I wanted a divorce but that faded by the time he got back home.”

Natasha doesn’t ask for the details.

“It’s not you. He’s had plenty of time to get over it. I just—We’ve been together so long. I actually don’t remember how to be in love with someone else. And it felt like he was emotionally gone even if he was physically still there.”

Natasha has no reference for that, but she thinks she understands. “How are you two getting on?”

“Fine I guess. I talked to him yesterday. He said he wasn’t losing me, so I guess that means he’ll deal with his problems. He’s back at SHIELD. Fury set him to investigate his would be assassin. I checked his file. Fury knocked him back a clearance level and has him on a low level probation.” Bobbi rolls her eyes. “If he finds Fury’s assassin too quickly, Fury won’t know what to do with him.”

Natasha stifles her laugh. Fury won’t want to keep the most prolific assassin in history on a chain for too long. He’s not that foolish. Besides once he figures out that Bobbi and Clint are separated, he might consider that punishment enough.

“I wanted to apologize,” Bobbi says again, reaching her hands out to Natasha, who takes them without thinking. “It wasn’t your fault. Clint and I stayed at this hotel once. I didn’t even remember it when we arrived. But it was the first time I realized how much I wanted him. He was late to meet me and I was terrified. I’ll be glad to leave. I don’t want to be reminded of him every time I turn. I need a break from him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Natasha wraps her arms around Bobbi’s waist. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“I’m more upset about the dead kids than my marriage. I had nightmares about them. The state of my marriage is a disappointment not a nightmare. I can handle it.”

“If you’re sure.”

–

The next day they go to another city. The hotel is ready; they drop their stuff off and go to the first place. No dead children there, but plenty of starved dirty living children. Places number two and three are more of the same. Place four has also been cleared out. They leave in late afternoon for Belarus.

At the Belorussian hotel, they take a video call from Fury. He starts off by informing them of the things another agents found. He confirms what they found. So far all they know for certain is the Dubiki crime family knows a lot about child smuggling rings. The total amount of dead children found so far is over three hundred. Several people have fled.

When the debriefing is done, Fury fixes his eye on Bobbi. “Dr. Morse,” he says with exaggerated patience, “we could have printed out personalized forms for you.”

“It’s fine,” Bobbi says.

Fury studies her. “Barton went to see your father. I’m told he’s in critical condition but conscious. Would you like a few days off?”

“God no,” Bobbi says. “My mother already called me. I told her to call Clint and make him go.”

“Why?”

“My father actually likes Clint. If I go, he’ll just stare at me silently like he did for most of my childhood.”

Fury snorts and signs off.

“Shouldn’t you go see your father?” Hill asks.

“Would you?” Bobbi shoots back. Natasha has never been told anything about Hill’s childhood, but she knows her mother is dead. Given the expression Hill makes, she doesn’t get along with her father. It’s the end of the conversation. They all go to bed.

In the morning, they go to the first place. It’s a nice looking house and business hybrid where the secretaries wear suits with clean lines that hide the guns on their backs to anyone but a trained spy. The woman at the front desk is icily calm in a way that Natasha finds amusing. Before she can give the woman a taste of what it’s like to be truly calm and cold, Hill and Bobbi have already decided the best way to play this is to pretend to buy a child. They had the codes in the file. They are taken to another room and given coffee. It will be strange if none of them drink, so Hill takes the cup.

When two men enter twenty minutes later, Hill is still feeling fine so they assume it’s not poisoned and no one suspects them of anything. They are taken back into a room full of children and absolutely no one asks them what three grown women want with a child. Natasha has seen worse in the Red Room but she still expects some questions at least. One man drones on for a while as the children watch them with resigned eyes. They’re chained to the floor, and they’re wrapped up like presents. Natasha wants to throw up but she focuses on them, trying to look something other than sick.

When all is said and done, Bobbi is the one who goes back to complete the transaction, as it was, and Natasha and Hill silently love to remove the cuffs and take the kids into custody, asking for a backup SHIELD truck asap. Hill shoos the kids outside, and they all go with them, too used to taking orders from adults to risk questions. 

Natasha goes back inside to help Bobbi. There are about four dozen armed guards, mere child’s play for both of them together, but they have assault rifles and are being heavy handed with them. Natasha dodges bullets left and right, making her attempts to shoot them back a little off balance. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Bobbi’s batons flashing in arcs. She’s having the same problem. They’re deflecting bullets more than they are getting their own shots in.

Natasha takes a flying leap at a man who turns his gun from her to the outside where Hill and the kids are. The rest of the men around them shoot at her. One of the bullets grazes her side, and she hisses in pain even as she throws two of her Widow’s Bites at them. The combined charges shock twelve men at once, so she throws another two. Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to grab them since they’re tucked into her waistband instead of on her wrists, so when she reaches for two more, she ends up getting shot in the arm. She shoots back without really looking.

Before she can grab them, she sees a flash of metal and spies Bobbi knocking men out quickly but with her batons together in one hand. It’s easier now that there are less men shooting at them, but it’s also more difficult with bodies on the ground. Natasha does not have Bobbi’s ethics—she is just fine with walking over a fallen body. Even so, the space isn’t big enough for the amount of people in it. It’s hard to move with all the bodies. Natasha leaps over two fallen men at once and shoots at the next four people.

“The van’s here!” she hears Bobbi shout and she turns her head just enough to catch Hill and two agents in jumpsuits herding the kids into the truck. She redoubles her efforts to get these men out of the way. The van will leave without them if it must, but Natasha really doesn’t want to have to find a way back to the hotel.

Within a few minutes, she and Bobbi have dispatched everyone else. Some of the men who were knocked out by her Bites are stirring; Bobbi knocks the more conscious ones in the head with her batons as she follows Natasha outside. 

Inside the van, Hill frowns at them both. They are both covered in blood. Most of it on Natasha is her. She isn’t sure about Bobbi. Although she’s breathing heavily and seems very weak all of a sudden that doesn’t mean much. The experimental serums mean Natasha has more stamina. Bobbi isn’t necessarily injured, just human.

When they get back to the hotel, Hill helps Natasha patch up the two bullet wounds. When they go to check on Bobbi, they find her trying to spin around in front of her mirror. She was shot in the shoulder, which explains why she put her batons together. Her left arm can’t move and she much have gotten hit in the back since there’s a giant bruise that wasn’t there earlier.

“You should have said something,” Hill says with repressed censure as she crosses the room in two long strides to Bobbi’s side, the first aid kit still in her hand. “Romanoff, go get some ice, will you?”

Natasha goes to the front desk and requests a bag of ice, charming the receptionist with a tale of falling in a busy street and getting some bruises. The man calls the kitchen and sympathizes with her. When she has the ice she goes back up to Bobbi’s room. Hill is pulling the bullet out of her shoulder with tweezers and Bobbi’s face has gone ghostly white.

They usually have local anesthesia when they do these things. 

Natasha places the ice next to Hill and takes Bobbi’s hand. “What’s up with your father?”

“He had a heart attack, I guess. My mother just said it was his heart.” Her voice is strained. 

“You aren’t worried?”

“I doubt he’s ever spared me a thought. My parents only got married because that’s you did back then. My mother was pregnant. He couldn’t leave her. I know he wanted to.”

“You can’t know that.”

“He yelled it at her often enough when he was drunk.”

Hill flinches a little behind Bobbi.

“You should go see him,” Natasha insists. “What about deathbed confessions and forgiveness?”

“I doubt he’s on his deathbed just yet. My mother would have called. And movies aren’t reality, Natasha. You’ve nitpicked a hundred action films and spy thrillers to know that.”

Natasha shrugs. “You could still go.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No! You might be sad if your father dies and you don’t see him one last time.”

“I might,” Bobbi allows. Hill presses the ice pack against her back, and Natasha moves closer to help her hold it there while Hill threads the needle. Bobbi can’t hold it and be stitched up at the same time, if she can even twist her back right now. “Thanks. But I think I’ll live. Besides, Clint is down there and I don’t want to see him.”

“Why did you send him?”

“My father adores him. He always wanted a son. He never cared that Clint wasn’t well-bred—”

“Is he a horse?” Natasha interjects as Hill presses the needle into Bobbi’s skin for the first stitch.

“Don’t make me laugh. It makes stitches worse.”

“You were saying…?”

“My dad wanted a son. And Clint was rough around the edges, maybe, but he was a man, and my dad needed someone to be a man with… like those idiots he always goes out with on the weekends isn’t enough. He says when I’m home it’s estrogen central, like I wouldn’t prefer to be downing beer in a seedy bar rather than ‘helping’ my mother with her dinner menus or being forced into shopping sprees. She doesn’t take no for an answer and dad won’t help me with her.”

“Highly trained super spy, too afraid of her mother.”

“Not an argument I’d win,” Bobbi says. “She doesn’t know how to take no for an answer. She’ll just say, ‘oh, well you maybe you can do this instead’ and it’s basically what she wants with a mild alteration and she’ll keep doing that until you cave.”

“I think my mother did the same thing,” Natasha says. “But nicer. She was good at coaxing us into doing things.”

Hill glances up but Bobbi keeps her eyes trained on Natasha’s face, like they have been for this entire conversation. 

“I think she did, at least,” Natasha adds. “I don’t really know what I’m remembering. But I remember siblings and she was always very good at making us get along.”

No one says anything. No one needs to.

–

Clint decides he’s had enough of Georgia less than an hour after he touches down. It’s hot and humid, and he’s pretty sure he won’t be able to peel his jeans off anytime soon. When he gets to the hospital, he’s acutely aware of the trickle of sweat down his back and what Bobbi’s mother will say about it, if she’s even still here. It’s not like Adaline gets along with her husband well enough to linger in some place as questionable as a hospital. Or maybe she feels she ought to be here for appearance’s sake. It’s hard to tell with her. It’s not like he understands how she makes her decisions.

He’s taken up to George Morse’s room and left there alone. He has a duffel bag with him that no one seems to register or want to check, which is just as well since he has some classified documents and a government badge in there. Rich people’s hospitals are different, so who knows how they do things. Adaline left his name and a picture at the front desk and they scanned in his ID, and that was it. Apparently, there’s no point in making sure he doesn’t have anything questionable in his duffel bag… like a crossbow and two extra guns.

George sits up in his bed, and Clint manages not to wince. It’s been a while since he’s seen the man, but he’s grayer and more wrinkled, and more than that, he’s very ill looking. “You’ve had better days, sir,” Clint says lightly.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Bobbi can’t make it.”

George doesn’t bother to show any sort of regret over that, not that Clint was expecting him to. “Just as well.”

Clint doesn’t grimace. He sinks into the chair on the side of the bed and smiles with as much warmth as he can muster. He figures he’s only clearing polite, but it’s not like George will notice or care. “How are you doing?”

“I have to have a quadruple bypass.”

“That’s a bad thing, you know. You don’t have to sound so happy.”

“I’m not happy,” George protests even as he smiles. 

Clint doesn’t need to ask. Adaline isn’t a great person to be around, they didn’t have a happy marriage, and he didn’t want to be at home. Adaline would try to cook healthy meals no one but her would touch, and when that plan fell through, she would ask their housekeeper to take over kitchen duty again. George wouldn’t eat anything she made either. He didn’t eat anything unless it was fried—fried eggs and bacon for breakfast, fried chicken and hush puppies for lunch, and chicken fried steak and french fries for dinner. He drank a lot of cheap beer and sometimes craft beers, and he often drunk rum and coke from a thermos he claimed to keep iced tea in. Clint doesn’t doubt this contributed to the need for a quadruple bypass.

“I’ll stay for the surgery,” Clint promises. He doesn’t have much else to do. He has files to go through and evidence to organize.

“It’s not necessary.”

“I’ll stay,” he repeats. George doesn’t smile, not exactly. He won’t ask Clint to stay, but Clint knows what the man wants. He knew that before he left from New York.

A nurse comes in and kicks him out. It’s getting late, and the bypass can be scheduled for tomorrow. George gives Clint a long suffering eye roll. “Adaline will have a room ready for you. God willing I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Adaline has Bobbi’s old room ready for him. They usually stayed in a hotel while they visited, but Adaline insists and Clint doesn’t have it him to fight with her right now. He’s been in Bobbi’s room before but only briefly. It’s painted a pale pink that’s faded even more with age. The walls are mostly covered in posters. Clint can easily imagine Bobbi being annoyed with the pink and trying to cover it. A _Star Wars_ poster, a S _tar Trek_ poster, some bands he doesn’t know. He studies them. It’s interesting to see this time capsule into Bobbi as a teenager. 

He knows only what’s she told him. He doesn’t doubt it’s everything important but he likes to look at the details. He knew she was fond of sci fi, at least when she was younger, but he’s never known her to be much of a music lover. She likes it well enough, will listen to just about anything, and occasionally she likes to go the symphony and the opera. It’s a shame to live in a place that has opera houses, she’d say, and never go. But it only happens once a year or so. She doesn’t care that much. Only when it’s not Mozart. She sat through Don Giovanni once, and that was once too many for her. One too many for him too, but he feels like that for all the operas. Still, it wasn’t the worse thing he’s sat through. Even if Mozart could have stopped repeating verses five times. 

He wonders if she actually liked these bands or if she felt like she ought to have liked them. She was a strange, different child. He knew how important it was for her to fit in back then. But how could she have when she was several years younger than the other students? He wouldn’t know what it was like. He never was around children his own age except for the customers at the circus. 

In the desk—white, painted with pink roses on the legs with a matching pink chair—he finds stationary with butterflies on it and a half finished note in Bobbi’s handwriting, not quite as neat and precise as it was nowadays. It looks like a letter to a friend, a sorry-I’m-going-to-college letter. On the type of paper only attractive to children and whimsical adults. He also found a pen with the end chewed up, a habit she lost sometime during their first year together when he was freelance, as anything that could help identify her would be something she wouldn’t want her enemies to get a hold of. He found a worn scientific journal dated from when she was about eleven underneath a store’s clothing catalog and a textbook hidden underneath a pile of glittery and sequined headbands. He can’t imagine her ever wearing them. He can’t imagine her mother buying her for them either. Maybe she chose them herself when she was still young.

In the dresser, which has been mostly emptied out, he finds an old hair brush and her training bra, and he hesitates for a moment, realizing he’s probably crossing a boundary. He closes the drawer and picks up his duffel. No point in waiting around to work.

–

Adaline’s housekeeper makes a breakfast of charred tomatoes, a vegetable quiche, and french toast. Clint sits across from Adaline at the table and tries to make small talk. He refrains from asking for cup of coffee. She hates the smell, and he isn’t in the mood for a lecture. He’s been up half the night, talking to contacts all over the world, answering questions about his disappearance from the game for a while—“I needed a break” isn’t an adequate answer apparently—and piecing together what he knows. His current suspects are Renee Martins, Alicia Jefferson, and a woman only known as Arachne, who had the misfortune to be experimented on and run from town to town. He will find none of them anywhere near Georgia, but he felt compelled to come as Bobbi surely expected. Now that he’s here, he wants to leave again. George will either make it through the surgery or not, and Clint doesn’t care enough to wait around to find out. But he will. He promised. 

He packs his duffel after breakfast and leaves it by the door. Adaline looks over from where she’s arranging flowers to bring to her husband’s hospital room and silently raises a judgmental eyebrow. 

“I have to leave this evening at the latest,” Clint says. The eyebrow raises higher, and he feels a stab of irritation. “I have to work.”

“Really?” she asks exasperatedly. “What sort of job do you two have? You’re never around and you’re always working.”

“We work for the government. You know that. It’s highly classified, and it’s not that interesting. But getting days off is difficult.”

She harrumphs. She does that a lot. Clint is sick of it. “Well, go on then. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

Clint stops to get a giant cup of coffee and a bottle of Advil. He goes to see George before he’s taken into the surgery, and Adaline is right behind him, carrying a vase of flowers and telling her husband she has his meals all planned out. George winces. Clint tries not to laugh.

With George in surgery, he settles for making his phone calls in the ultra sleek private waiting room for patients in that wing. There’s only one other person there, a woman with a bored expression flipping through magazines. She’s puffing on a cigarette, which the nurse who shows Clint the way tells her to put out or finish outside. The woman sneers and flounces out, leaving him alone thankfully. His conversation would be primarily in Romanian, but the less people to overhear the better. And if no one could overhear, that was perfect.

His contact can’t tell him much. Arachne appears as a young woman, but some say she’s centuries old. She doesn’t have a past, and she doesn’t appear to have a present. She gained the name in Serbia, where she worked as a barmaid, and people chased her out of town with pitchforks and accusations of witchcraft. His contact tells him people said she was lost and confused, and she had been terrified by the pitchforks after an accident. He said as she fled, she was crying and stumbling and begging them to understand it was an accident. What that accident was no one could find out. 

So if it’s her, she’s fallen in with someone bad. That doesn’t mean she herself is bad. After all, she intentionally missed, and she’s not been accused of anything yet. Witchcraft isn’t exactly… well, Clint’s willing to believe a lot of things, but not a small town’s accusations of witchcraft. 

He looks for Alicia Jefferson. She killed a man in Minsk two days ago. Just because she was paid a million dollars to do so, with no question why he needed to be killed. She doesn’t seem like the sort of person with morals or ethics, and he doesn’t think she would deliberately miss unless someone was paying her more to miss, but he need options. Renee Martins can’t be proven to be somewhere else, and it was definitely fit her profile for her to miss. She likes to toy with her targets. She’ll frighten them and then kill them. But presumably she knows Fury’s almost impossible to frighten.

When George gets out of surgery successfully, Clint gets lunch at a cafe with another giant cup of coffee and some ham and cheese on a croissant. It isn’t the most appetizing of things, but he was overwhelmed by the choices in the hospital. He’s never seen a hospital that makes handmade fresh food for the families of the patients, and he didn’t want to deal with it just then. So he complies his information in codes so he can put it into the database later.

He visits with George briefly and promises to call at a later date. He catches his flight to DC from the SHIELD base. There he tracks down Alicia Jefferson, who’s there stalking a Pentagon official. It’s almost ten o’clock at night, and he wants nothing more than to eat, but he finds her relatively easily, She’s tall and leggy with the sort of eyes that drive a man up the wall with lust, and on an ordinary day he might have to force himself to remember she’s his enemy. This isn’t an ordinary day, and it hasn’t been since Bobbi left. He’s been mostly numb with flashes of anger and longing over the last week.

Alicia struggles with him as he presses a gun to her side and wraps his hand around her throat. On the tip of his finger is a thimble-like covering containing a small needle with a sedative and he presses into her carotid artery, holding her struggling body against his for the few seconds it takes for the sedative to kick in. Wincing from his now bruised shins and stomach, he picks up her limp body and takes her into the SHIELD base.

The Washington DC base has always put Clint a little on edge. It’s a glass and metal structure that seems ultra modern and tall, different in so many way from the sprawling complex that is the New York base. And there’s Alexander Pierce who is too much like a politician for Clint to totally trust. There’s talk of him being Secretary of Defense but for now he’s just top brass at SHIELD and the manager of the DC base. He’s worked with Fury for so long that he’s essentially the unofficial third in command. Fourth, if Clint counts the World Security Council, which he so often doesn’t. Or maybe he’s somewhere in between Fury and the Council. Clint can’t remember all the gossip. He’s never much cared about where Pierce was on the list. He doesn’t deal with him.

Pierce meets him with a tense smile and leads him towards the cells. “Do you think she’s the one who tried to shoot Nick?”

“She wouldn’t be my first choice,” Clint says. “But she was after a high ranking Pentagon official so who knows?”

Pierce frowns. “That might mean she gave up on Nick.”

“Or she’s not the one,” Clint adds. He knows Pierce is thinking it too.

Alicia wakes up when they’re near the cells. Although she starts to kick, she’s still groggy from the drug, so her kicks are weak. Clint manages to hold onto her by the tips of his fingers and almost literally throws her into the cell. In this state he can’t get her strapped into the cuffs on the walls to question her, so he just walks out of the cell. Pierce watches him with a question in his eyes. “I’m hungry, and she needs to cool down,” Clint says shortly, aware he’s being rude. Fury and McKay and just about everyone but Coulson at the New York base don’t question his motives. 

“Ah, of course. The cafeteria is six floors up, same hall. This elevator will take you straight there. Will you need a room for the night?”

“Yes. Please,” he adds.

The room is like all SHIELD rooms, which is comforting in a way. It’s bare and utilitarian with whitewashed walls and a cot-like bed and a bathroom with the most basic features. Clint takes a shower and redresses in clean clothes and heads to the cafeteria. He gets a chicken salad sandwich and more coffee and eats it in the corner of the room. A couple of people say hello, probably out of politeness more than anything else. After all, only another agent would be sitting here. 

Sometime near midnight he goes to talk to his prisoner. He’s pretty sure she’s not the one, and he doubts she’ll have anything useful to say. But he might as well go talk to her anyway.

She’s glaring at the door when he comes in. On either side of him are two guards to make sure she doesn’t try to slip out past him. When she’s safely in the room, they go back out and leave him with the glaring brunette.

“You must take care of your hair,” he says lazily as he sinks into the seat across from her. “It’s very glossy.”

She sneers at him. He stares back at her. He’s okay with silence these days. He needs it. The only voice he wants to hear is Bobbi’s, and she hasn’t called again. But then why would she? She wanted a clean break. He was in the house, and she was nice to suggest it—he probably wouldn’t have stopped to think about it—and that was it. Situation handled. Now it was time for the break. And he couldn’t blame her exactly. If he could walk away from himself he would. But he can’t so he has to deal with it instead. And he wants to hate her for leaving but that’s such a terrible way to think. She dealt with a lot. And he didn’t deal with it, which gave her more to deal with. Until the whole thing was as much of a mess as he was. Is. So she left, and he can’t fault her for that, and that’s that. 

Except it’s not done, not just yet, so he holds on the possibilities instead.

Finally, Alicia Jefferson falters. Clint glances discreetly at his watch. It took her a whole fifteen minutes. Rarely did anyone last that long. She must be well trained. It would make her harder to break, if he wanted to break her. “You caught me. I was following Grant Richardson with the intent to kill. What do you want _now_?” she asks aggressively.

“I want to know why you tried to kill Nick Fury.”

Her face blanches. She knows what the implications of that mean. If SHIELD thinks she tried to kill their director, there is no place she can go in this system where she will be safe to be a normal prisoner. If they don’t just kill her. Her following Grant Richardson would get into the normal judicial system, where a good lawyer might try to go against SHIELD’s evidence. Even if the lawyer didn’t win, she would probably be out of jail soon enough. “If I wanted Nick Fury dead, he would be dead,” she says with strain creeping up in her voice. Her knuckles go white where she desperately clutches the edge of the metal slab that serves as a bed for the prisoners.

“Your first shot missed.”

“I didn’t make any shots! If the first missed, I would have kept shooting until he was dead or I was caught!”

“Why were you following Grant Richardson? He’s a family man. Has three kids and a football team worth of grandchildren. He’s very supportive of the general populace.”

“I was paid to kill him. The why only matters to who hired me,” she states definitively and she refuses to say more.

Clint goes to bed. She isn’t his problem anymore.


	3. let me give you something to believe in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is so interested by the inclusion of Jessica that I'm nervous. Hope you enjoy!

“Your father is doing well,” Adaline says censoriously. Bobbi moves the phone away from her mouth so she can sigh deeply. She closes the file in her lap—five agents dead, five hundred children found dead, three teams taken out of rotation due to injuries—and focuses on thinking of things that don’t make her want to strangle someone.

“That’s good,” Bobbi says instead of _why are you trying to pretend we’re a loving family and I’m a dutiful daughter; we both know neither of us give a fuck if he dies._

“He would like to speak to you.”

No, he wouldn’t. Fury had already passed along a message from Clint that more or less summarized her father’s condition and their conversations. She wasn’t missed. She never had been. It stopped hurting a long time ago when she realized she didn’t want to be wanted by them. She just wanted to leave and never come back. “Is he there?”

“No, he’s not back from the hospital yet.”

“Have him call me when he gets out. If I don’t answer, just leave a message.” And before she can get properly irritated, she hangs up the phone.

“Dumb question, maybe,” Natasha says from across the plane’s seating area, “but why are you in contact with your parents at all when you hate them so much?”

“You sound like Clint,” Bobbi mutters. “He never got it either.” She heaves another sigh. “My mother doesn’t give up. I didn’t talk to her for two years and she still called weekly. I caved.”

“You can’t possibly be afraid of your mother.”

“It’s not fear.” Bobbi reopens the file and stares blankly at the code names of the agents who died. She doesn’t recognize them all. The ones she does know she didn’t know well enough to feel anything other than a momentary pain. “I don’t need to fight a fight I’ve already lost.”

“You gave up. That’s not a loss.”

Bobbi doesn’t answer. She focuses all her attention on the file that was handed to her the moment she stepped in the airplane. The World Security Council is pushing too much, too fast, and Fury’s losing grip on this mission. The teams are dwindling from injuries sustained, and the criminal underworld is killing off the children and disappearing into the night. The amount of information they learned is useless when they can’t do anything with it, and it’s even more useless considering the Council doesn’t seem inclined to make all the information known to the teams. Each team is going off their destinations and the information they uncover, even though other teams might have more. But then Council isn’t known for running SHIELD well. Their fear of traitors is legendary as is their tendency to make rash decisions that may stop things in their tracks but only with more causalities than necessary. 

Natasha gives up on waiting for an answer. “We have a new list of places to check. Last page.”

Bobbi flips to the last page. She studies the list of cities and addresses dispassionately. Everywhere from Germany to Portugal had been added to their list. She knows some of these addresses. She has worked missions there before. One of the addresses used to sell drugs and national secrets. She flips back to the beginning of the file and reads through it all again. Nothing new, nothing helpful. She slams the file shut, but the paper just flutters closed in an unsatisfying manner. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Natasha nods with a concealed sigh. Hill had fallen asleep immediately after skimming the file. Natasha hated being on small aircraft with nothing to do. It made her feel antsy. Bobbi would suggest that she take a nap too, but she knows what her suggestion will be met with, so she leaves it alone and sinks down. 

She means to relax before they land and go hunting again, but her nap isn’t peaceful. She dreams of her mother, bitter and twisted with her broken dreams and desperation for something else, something bigger, something _better_. That was the crux of her mother’s bitterness, after all. She’d been raised in a broken home, alternating between Georgia and California. She wanted to be accepted in the highest tiers of Southern society, but her mother had given that up, and it was closed to her daughter too. When in San Diego, she met Bobbi’s father, they embarked on a whirlwind, torrid affair, and Adaline got pregnant. The subsequent marriage was a terrible idea but it was the done thing, more or less, at the time, and they came to Georgia, where Adaline made good use of George’s rich coworkers’ connections and launched herself into the second-highest tier of Southern society.

Bobbi knows that she did not aid her mother in her attempts. Bobbi was not the sort of girl that would dress up as a debutante, but there are photos of her with big blonde curls and garish eighties makeup and a demure white dress. She dreams of that too. The eighties makeup had been her choice, but her mother had just been grateful she was taking time off her busy university studies to do this. Bobbi had never managed to tell her mother that she only did it because her father said he would stop paying her tuition if he had to hear one more complaint from Adaline about how she was the only mother whose daughter wouldn’t be _making her debut_. Bobbi would’ve argued that she made her debut the day she was born except that she’s fairly sure neither of her parents would heed that argument.

When the dream finally shifts, it shifts to Clint and the soft lilac dress she was wearing on her first mission, which was supposed to end with her capturing him. Not that anyone thought she would, except for maybe herself. She’d chosen the dress so as to look as different from herself as usual, and it worked. It was a fluttery dress that made her look ethereal and softly, pleasantly pretty. Clint had liked the dress. He’d pinned her as a spy, but he liked the dress. And she liked the way his hand felt on her arm. She remembers thinking that her new job as a spy will be very difficult if her stomach flutters that way every time an attractive man smiles at her, but it was just Clint that made her feel that way.

The plane hits a patch of turbulence. Bobbi jerks awake, half expecting to find herself in Clint’s arms. It takes barely two minutes to get through it, but she forces herself to stay awake after.

–

They make their way up through Estonia and down into Germany over the course of three days. Bobbi spends the entire time feeling drained and dehydrated from the constant plane rides and the increasing amount of injuries sustained. They learn nothing new, and they find another fifty or so dead bodies among four addresses. 

The Council’s plans move the teams quickly. They land in Germany an hour after another team has left and search different addresses. Bobbi thinks this is an overall terrible plan, but she has no say in it. Fury is irritated by the check-ins the Council mandates, so he assigns Coulson to take them over. As Bobbi gets off the phone with Coulson for the third time in as many hours, she debates the validity of an anonymous complaint to the Council. But Hill reminds her that the Council hasn’t actually looked at the anonymous complaints for two years. Bobbi doesn’t ask how she knows this, but she isn’t surprised.

In Luxembourg, they rest for three hours due to the plane deciding to give out. Hill pulls out three syringes of morphine almost as soon as they land. Bobbi doesn’t like morphine that much, but she takes stock of injuries and comes to the inevitable conclusion that she won’t make it through another fight without it. She has two new knife wounds and three bullet wounds, her ribs are bruised, and her wrist is fractured. Her lip is split too, and she carefully applies lipstick to cover it up long enough to go into the airport and eat with Hill and Natasha while their pilot works on the plane. While they don’t have a SHIELD base in Luxembourg, government officials had cleared them to land for mechanical aid as long as they stay at the airport.

When the plane is finally fixed three hours later, Bobbi reluctantly climbs back aboard. They have a bumpy plane ride into France, where some addresses lurk in the slums of Paris. They find more dead children but no useful information, save that Interpol may have a traitor. She calls Coulson and repeats this information and sounding very worn-out he says he’ll let them know.

They skip Spain completely—other teams will deal with that; between them all they’re checking every country in the world—and go straight down into a port in Portugal. By then, the morphine is wearing off and Bobbi is feeling the full effects of sleeping in short bursts over the past few days. Hill is feeling it too, judging by the way she staggers out of the airplane, losing grip on her coffee cup. Only Natasha seems to be fine courtesy of the Red Room serums, and even then, her eyes are dead with lack of sleep. 

Their pilot, too, is exhausted, having gotten even less sleep than them. He puts his head down on the wheel and mutters something at them, but it’s clear he doesn’t expect a response. Just as well, because none of them can seem to come up with any words other than “we need to—” and “yeah let’s go.”

They know that this won’t be a good place to check out. The ship is ready to leave, and stopping the ship isn’t going to be fun. But SHIELD has a good relationship with Portugal for the most part, so the government official they meet on the docks says it’s already been done. Bobbi climbs aboard the ship, ignoring the captain’s scowl. Local law enforcement is also around, thanks to the government official, and Hill asks them to keep hold of the captain in case. He might not be aware of anything happening on his ship, but chances are he was involved, and he wasn’t happy about this.

The ship is a retired cruise ship, and it has five decks. On the first two, they find normal things for trade. Underneath that, they find black market guns, what appears to be blood conflict diamonds, a cache of money from several different countries and a hell of a lot of drugs. Underneath that, crew quarters. Underneath that, they find ten little girls, all blonde and blue-eyed, their ankles chained to the floor. Natasha tries to speak to them in Portuguese; when that doesn’t work she switches to Spanish. One of the girls responds quietly, her voice lilting with fear. Natasha bends down to hear her better, and one of the girls whimpers. 

Bobbi feels rather than hears someone approaching her from behind. Out of the corners of the ship, men emerge, wielding guns and clubs, baseball bats and knives. She catches sight of the girls withdrawing into themselves. Natasha and Hill turn at the same, throwing knives nearly in unison. Acting on instinct, Bobbi dodges a blow from a baseball bat.

The ensuing fight is a mess. In the closed space, there is little room, and there’s not enough sound to make the local law enforcement come down to investigate, especially when they’re dealing with the drugs. Natasha, Bobbi and Hill intend to keep the girls out of harm’s way, and in doing that, they don’t get as many strikes in as they want. Not to mention shooting guns in such a small area is a guaranteed way to hit your companions. But finally, Hill gives up on trying not to pull out her gun, Natasha follows her, and in short order, with Bobbi keeping the bullets away from the girls, the fight dies down. 

Unfortunately, they get struck too much. Bobbi’s ribs are broken in the fray, and she thinks her collarbone is broken too, given that her arm more or less is immobile when the adrenaline wears off. The government official sent to meet them has a car take them to the nearest hospital. Bobbi wants to sink into the morphine and go oblivious but they force themselves up. Her collarbone is fractured and her wrist broken, but it’s on the same side, and she’s worked with broken ribs before. 

They force themselves up into England, where London hides a lot of things and a fair bit of them are terrible. This fight is even worse, and Bobbi feels her fingers snap under the pressure and weight of a metal pipe wielded by a large, imposing guard. 

Hill pulls out more morphine after that, and they move through the British Isles. Each new place brings a fight that could have been avoided if they’d more reconnaissance, more time, more planning, more _sleep_. Bobbi thinks she might just pass out if she only gets another two hours of sleep. Her vision has been blurring for hours now, and when she stands, she gets dizzy. Luckily, they have a layover in New York, and Bobbi manages to get a whole five hours of sleep on the plane until they land. She regrets not taking another shot of morphine and taking Natasha’s side in her argument with Hill on whether or not they should go to the London base and seek treatment. But Bobbi and Hill both just wanted to sleep in their own beds for a night so Natasha lost out. 

Fury meets them on the tarmac. He takes one look at them and sends them straight to medical. Bobbi can’t stay awake long enough to wait for a doctor, but Melinda May shows up and asks, “What happened with you and Barton?”

Bobbi lifts her head just enough to make out the image of Melinda just beyond the doorway, blurred by exhaustion and blood loss. “We never talk about relationships.”

“That’s because I’m never in one and you’re with Barton.”

“You never want to be in one.”

Melinda shrugs. At least that’s what Bobbi thinks she does. The movement is too minute for her to really make out. “Call me curious,” Melinda says. “Call me protective, because Barton filed the paperwork this morning and soon enough everyone’s gonna know.”

Bobbi sighs. She didn’t want people to know. She never understood why people cared that much. SHIELD is gossipy for a bunch of people with terrible secrets. “He wasn’t the man I fell in love with anymore.”

“He seems to be handling things just the same.”

Bobbi thinks she hears a trace of doubt in her voice but she can’t tell for certain. She definitely doesn’t know why Mel would doubt her. “He said he didn’t want to lose me,” she says. “I just needed to be away from him. I just needed to…” _be away from him_ , she finishes in her head, only vaguely remembering she just said that.

“Okay. I was just curious.”

“It’s not meant to be forever. Just a… reset period.”

“Okay,” Mel repeats.

“I know you don’t like Clint.”

“I don’t hate him.”

“As if that means anything.”

“Better him than that loser with a mullet.”

“He didn’t have a mullet,” Bobbi says reflexively. “Wait, who are you talking about?”

“Anthony or Adam or whatever. That lab assistant you were dating before Barton.”

On a good day, Bobbi only vaguely remembers Anthony. Half asleep and worn out beyond belief, she can only conjure the image of a man with a dark brown mullet, his other features blurry. Mel is right about the mullet; Bobbi remembers wishing he’d cut it off. It’s the only thing she remembers from that relationship. “A mullet didn’t make him a bad person.”

“No, the fact that he cheated on you made him a bad person.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Good.”

The doctor comes in. Melinda promises to stop by later when medical is done “putting you back together.” Bobbi obediently lays back and submits to the x-rays and prodding. To stay awake and answer questions, she thinks about Anthony and tries to remember something about the end of their relationship. By that time, she’d already met Clint, already had her head turned by his touch, even though his touch was only ever chaste. By that time, she had already realized that Anthony—Adam doesn’t even sound the same, she wants to tell Mel—was not committed to her because he thought with her new job as a spy meant she wouldn’t be committed to him. And maybe that was true, in a way, with how easily Clint turned her head without even trying, but it was also false, because she really had been trying. She’d walked in on him with another woman, she remembers, but she hadn’t cared as much as she should have. She’d gone out for drinks with Mel instead and let her be the one who insulted him because Bobbi hadn’t cared enough to. They had only gone on ten or so dates after all.

She disagrees with Mel though. In some ways, she thinks, Anthony would have been better. At least it hadn’t hurt.

–

Clint tracks down Renee Martins somewhere in Delaware. She has a huge gash across the side of her face, on the same side as was facing the camera in the photograph of the would-be assassin, and he can tell it’s old enough that she isn’t the one he’s looking for. All the same, he dumps her in a prison cell because she’s probably up to something. There have been some suspicious shootings and assassination attempts. And even if it’s not her, she’s done enough to be arrested by them. 

Tracking down Arachne it is, then. He settles into his desk at SHIELD and ignores the looks people are casting him. Him being back has been overridden by the collapse of his marriage. People are careful to whisper quietly enough his hearing aids don’t pick it up, but he can still read lips, can still see the word “divorce” on them. He wants to lash out at them. He wants to cry. He settles for staring at his screen and trying to comb through the information. Nothing new and nothing helpful on Arachne, unless he counted an image of her in a red jumpsuit with her hair tied back. She looks like a dozen other dark-haired, long-limbed pretty women. But he still studies her features, committing them to memory in case he happens to run into her. 

Someone clears their throat. Clint looks up at his computer to find McKay standing in front of his desk. He frowns at the picture. “Who is that woman?”

“Probably the one who shot at Fury.”

McKay almost sighs. Almost. “Dr. Morse, Agent Romanoff, and Lieutenant Hill have been taken off the roster for injuries. I thought you’d be worried about them.” McKay says nothing about the state of Bobbi and Clint’s marriage. And Clint says nothing about how he completely forgot about Natasha and Maria and is now feeling guilty when they’re mentioned.

“How bad is it?” Clint says.

McKay’s brow furrows in thought. “Bad,” he says eventually. “I can’t remember it all. So many agents have been injured. The mission may be closed to those not working it but the medical records are open. They’re being kept in an induced coma for now. Are you close to finding this woman?”

“No. But she’s been seen twice in the same area so I’ll look for her there to start.” Tomorrow. He doesn’t feel like working tonight, not when Fury hasn’t left this building for eight days and won’t for another eight at least.

McKay nods. He just looks tired and ill up close. Clint doesn’t know if it’s from attempted assassinations, dead children, or the overwhelming number of injured agents. His tie is crooked, the most telling sign with a man as well dressed as him. “I know you’re busy, sir,” he begins with as much diplomacy as he can muster right now, “but you look like death warmed over. Maybe you should take a nap.”

McKay gives a startled laugh and says, “I might just do that, Mr. Barton,” and leaves.

Clint opens the medical files out of curiosity more than anything else. He knows it’s almost impossible to seriously injure Natasha, and Bobbi and Maria are hard to kill. The worry seems unnecessary. 

Maria’s medical injuries: bruises all over, some of them intramuscular, eight bullet wounds, six knife wounds, four broken ribs, minor damage to the spinal cord, hopefully nothing major, and a nine inch gash across her back too, and a fracture in her leg that she’s been walking on. The good leg, thankfully, although the last thing she needs is for both legs to be in a bad state. Broken toes. Minor internal bleeding, easily dealt with. Severe dehydration and low levels of necessary vitamins and minerals in the system.

Natasha mostly has cuts and bruises that were already healing up when she arrived at medical. A couple of bullet and knife wounds, also healing on their own. She has no broken bones, but she had some internal bleeding. With the Red Room’s serums, she’ll pull through. Also even more severe dehydration and malnourishment since with the serums she needs more food and water than the average person. It takes very little to put Natasha in a malnourished state. At the same time, she can go without food for a while too without the malnourishment doing anything to her. Clint does not understand the serums at all.

Bobbi: Severe dehydration, low levels of vitamins. Four broken fingers, a broken wrist, broken ribs, a broken collarbone. Broken cheekbone, broken nose, multiple facial contusions. Only a couple of bullet wounds, and only a few more knife wounds. A couple intramuscular bruises. Minor internal bleeding. The doctors who examined them agreed that medically induced comas, a drip IV, and rest would help them all considerably. The doctors also wrote a stern reminder to the people in the command that the agents working the child poison case are all in generally bad health after not sleeping or eating enough and that they were constantly increasing their risks of making mistakes and dying from either lack of sleep or injuries incurred while being too fuzzy to fight properly. 

Clint shuts down the computer. He needs a drink.

–

There’s a tiny bar in Brooklyn that serves giant martinis that Clint is pretty sure are straight up gin. Even the olives taste like they’ve been soaked in gin overnight. Clint pops the olives into his mouth one by one, all eighteen of them, and decides that salty gin-soaked olives are disgusting. He eats them anyway then he washes it down with half the martini and a mound of cheese fries. 

He’s debating whether or not he should order something less fat laden—and haranguing himself for eating all the cheese fries in what felt like one bite—when he realizes he’s feeling a little bit dizzy. He’s drunk this cocktail a thousand times before so he knows it’s not the alcohol. He fumbles in his pocket for a drug tester and as surreptitiously as he can manage, he sticks in his drink. The paper fizzles a little and turns into a pale pink-red. GHB. He doesn’t know where it would have come from, since he watches the bartender make the drink, hand it to the waitress, and she came straight over it. Which means someone working at this place wanted him drugged. It’s hard to guess who; the patrons of this bar are all shady. He texts “drugged” into SHIELD’s system. Sooner or later, someone will track down his location and come get him. He could have sent them the name of the bar, but instinct is screaming at him to leave. He’s not convinced he can trust his instincts, but they’re screaming so he carefully tosses down a couple twenties, gets to his feet, and walks down the street to the coffee shop. It’s a hole in the wall place with weak pale coffee, but he gets a giant cup of it with a couple extra shots of espresso. 

He drinks it as he walks down the street, trying to keep steady and keep an eye on his surroundings. There are a lot of people out tonight and his instincts don’t tell him anything. He keeps walking straight, finally making it into an area he knows better. He tosses his drink and heads into a cafe tucked into a corner, an expensive place with thirty dollar coffee drinks and twenty dollar apple fritters. But they won’t kick him out. He double checks he still has his wallet, settles into a corner table and orders the most expensive drink on the menu, which is topped with gold leaf, and a gâteau opéra, whatever that is. Clint doesn’t have it in him to read the French description right now, not with his vision going in and out and his head heavy on his shoulders. It’s cake and that’s good enough.

He’s halfway through the coffee when a woman matching Arachne’s description peers through the door, catches sight of him, and cautiously walks over. “Hawkeye?”

“Arachne?”

She flinches. “It’s Jessica.”

“You’re a long way from your handlers, Jessica.”

“They thought you were onto them.”

“I wasn’t. I just wanted to relax.” Somewhere in the back of his brain, he can hear the voice of one of his training agents tell him that too much truth is bad with a suspect. On the other hand, Natasha, who survived a lot more than any of Clint’s training agents combined, had once reluctantly offered the advice that the truth could be a great thing to share to give you time to think. Judging by the look on Jessica’s face, she didn’t believe him, and hopefully he could come up with something, like who in the bar was part of her handlers. She certainly wasn’t in the bar. 

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” she asks.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees two SHIELD agents walk in. Ramona and Hector. He’s worked with them a dozen times before. “I don’t suppose you’re here to pay for me.”

She glances down at the menu the hostess handed her and blinks at the prices. “They don’t give me money,” she says, which he almost believes. 

Ramona is coming closer. He makes a movement under the table to halt her. “Then I guess I am curious why you’re here.”

Jessica swallows. Behind the red lipstick and the layers of makeup, she looks young and scared. “I don’t know.”

“Well then,” he says, draining the last of his coffee, “let’s go for a ride.”

–

Fury does not know what he expects when Arachne is escorted to his office. A battle hardened woman, maybe, but definitely not this little girl with wide, terrified eyes. One of the agents prods her into a chair and she sinks down into it, still staring at him as if he’s going to swallow her whole. This is not what he expects from a woman who took a shot at him. He wasn’t impressed. He also wasn’t in the mood to deal with her, not when he was in the middle of reading a list of dead agents. With any luck the Council will die from heart attacks in their sleep tonight, and he won’t have to deal with them in the morning. He can’t begin to think of a diplomatic way to say they’re idiots who don’t know how to run a mission.

Luckily, diplomacy isn’t necessary for Arachne. He wonders what makes her so dangerous. She just looks like a skinny, terrified girl. Nothing special, nothing different. He has only a vague idea of what Barton found out. He is too deep in the deaths of children to pay attention to the person trying to kill him. He pulls up Barton’s reports, but they don’t have much in the way of information. Everything about Arachne is secondhand. Most of it is probably true—Barton’s sources are usually accurate—but Fury is having a hard time believing the “ _allegedly a genetically modified spider with human characteristics_ ” bit. What does that even translate into with powers?

He can’t resist knowing. Hoping to startle her into showing a power, as soon as they’re alone, he makes a sudden move towards her and she yelps. He jerks back the second he feels the sting burning his shoulder. He looks down and sees his coat and shirt smoking. He brushes the ashes of his shirt off and checks the wounds. Interesting.

Meanwhile, Arachne is mumbling, “Oh god oh god oh god I didn’t mean to do that I’m so sorry,” in one long rambling breath. Fury blinks a couple times and realizes it’s not a lack of sleep that’s making her voice go in and out.

“I’m so sorry!” she squeaks. “Oh my god, are you passing out?”

Something sarcastic is on the tip of his tongue, but his vision turns black before he can say anything. Dimly, he hopes he’ll miss his conference with the Council.

–

Jessica squeaks again and forces herself to think. She takes a couple tentative steps forward and feels for a pulse. When she finds one, she lets the relief settle for her a moment. What to do now? Attacking Nick Fury was a one way ticket to a prison cell in hell on earth. And she knows she can’t leave the SHIELD building without getting caught. 

Why had she gone after Hawkeye tonight? She was enjoying a milkshake and a burger for the first time when someone had come to get her. They dumped her off on another one of her handlers. They’d been following Hawkeye and she followed them after escaping her current watchdog. They passed Hawkeye by, forgetting what he looked like, but she had seen him go into that cafe and followed him in. She couldn’t figure out why then and she didn’t know now. She should have left. Hawkeye hadn’t been a threat to her or her handlers. She’s even starting to believe that he hadn’t been lying to her and he genuinely had just gone out for a drink. 

She pokes her head out the office door, but there’s no one in the hallway. She opens a side door and peeks into another office. There’s a man scribbling on the desk. She knocks on the door tentatively. When he looks up, she waves weakly and says, “I accidentally attacked Fury?”

“Is that a question?” the man says as he stands. 

Jessica frowns as she tries to place him. They showed her a picture of him, she’s sure. “No.”

“Well then, what did you do?” he asks as he stands and walks across the office to the door. 

“I shoot blasts out of my hands. I—He startled me. I did try to shoot him, so I thought...”

“Arachne, I presume. Deputy Director McKay.”

Bristling over the codename, she almost misses his introduction. “Jessica.”

“Well, Jessica, let’s call medical.”

“He still has a pulse. I think I just stunned him. It’s happened before. He’ll be fine a few hours.”

McKay checks Fury’s pulse, places a phone call, and sits down on the corner of the desk. “How did you come to SHIELD, Jessica?”

“Hawkeye. I—They drugged him tonight, and I just wanted to see… They made him sound so frightening.” _You’re not making any sense, Jessica_ , she tells herself. _And you don’t know what you’re doing here. What they’ll do to you._ But on the other hand, she reasons, she is no safer with her handlers in HYDRA. They have proven time and time again she is little more than a weapon. Like tonight, when they came to drag her out of the burger place. She only knew they drugged Hawkeye because they were talking about it. No one spoke to her. They just dragged her up by the elbow and marched her off. No one ever spoke to her except to give her orders. It was enough to make her flee them. 

She can’t go back now, so she settles back into Fury’s visitor’s chair and says more clearly, “I was brought in by Hawkeye. Willingly,” she adds as if that makes any difference.

McKay smiles thinly. He looks about as tired as Nick Fury had.

Two people in scrubs come into the room and pick Fury up between them. They glance curiously at her but direct their questions to McKay. “Nick frightened Jessica,” he says. “She thinks the blast will wear off in a few hours time. At least he’ll get some rest.”

“Maybe she should shock you too,” Hawkeye says, appearing the doorway. Once again, Jessica is struck by how young he looks. She expected him to be older, harder, more inhuman and unfeeling. He grins at McKay. “Did you say you were going to get some rest, old man?”

“I didn’t say that, no.”

Hawkeye moves out of the way so the medics can drag Fury out. “Get some rest, sir. Let me talk to Jessica.”

Jessica resists the urge to squeak. She’s been trained to fight SHIELD, after all, and just because she’s questioning everything right now doesn’t mean she needs to be afraid. She can kill a lot of people, even if she doesn’t escape. 

McKay murmurs something and heads back into his own office. Hawkeye shuts the door and sits down in Fury’s vacated chair. “That’s two attacks on Nick Fury,” he says conversationally. “Not going to look good for you.”

“It was an accident.”

“I know.”

Jessica doubts that. 

“Do you have a last name, Jessica?”

“Drew. Do _you_ have a name, Hawkeye?”

“Everyone does,” he says easily. “But I’m not the one under arrest.” She just stares back at him. He grins. “Tough crowd.”

“You’re not funny.”

“My ex-wife would probably agree.”

“You were married?”

“Haven’t we all been?”

She wants to kick him under the desk, but there’s a solid board of wood there. She could kick through it but she doesn’t think ruining Fury’s desk will win her any goodwill. “You have questions. I’m not going anywhere. So ask them.”

“Okay,” he says. “Why did you betray HYDRA?”

She flinches. Betrayal is a harsh word, and the question is one she was hoping he wouldn’t ask. “Who says I did? Maybe I’m leading them right to you.”

“HYDRA knows where this base is. They’ve tried to attack it in the past. I saw those two men following us. They know you’re with me. You can’t go back, Jessica. Your choices right now are a prison cell or death by experimentation.”

Her insides feel cold. If these are her options as a human being, what would SHIELD do if they knew she wasn’t human at all? “I went to a museum last week.” She swallows harshly and wonders if it’s normal to hear your heart pounding in your own ears. How could Hawkeye not hear it? “We were off-duty, and my handlers knew I was going,” she adds defensively as if she saw something in Hawkeye’s blank face that was judging her work ethic. “There was—There was a Captain America exhibit.”

She hadn’t known anything about the man. She still didn’t, not really; his exhibit was the bare bones facts: born July 4, 1918 in Brooklyn, joined the army, volunteered for a science experiment. To be a science experiment. But they had talked about the Howling Commandos, had talked about crippling HYDRA, the Nazi science division that lingered on. She read the words and was half-afraid that someone would see her for what she was, only this time it wasn’t because she was a genetically modified spider but because she was a HYDRA agent. These people were not popular. She sat in on a movie reel about HYDRA and their so-called defeat—only SHIELD knew about them these days—and she watched another about the Nazis, another about post-war Germany, and another about Captain America, a silly, fictionalized film that rang false to her. She watched one last one before the museum closed, a reel of flickering old footage with Captain America talking about the rise of HYDRA within the already terrible Nazism. He said he hoped America would do better than they have been doing, not allowing the Jewish to seek refuge in America, for one, and he also took them to task for testing the Captain America serum on black men who hadn’t volunteered for it. He recounted battles and read updated death tolls in concentration camps, and he made a powerful speech, a call to arms for anyone with a heart and an innate sense of right and wrong, during the war and after.

Jessica had never thought of herself as having a sense of right and wrong. She hadn’t thought about it. But his speech was stirring, little wonder why his men followed him into dangerous battles, and it made her sick to death when she laid down for bed that night. All she could dream of was people being starved and worked to death, like they weren’t people at all. She felt like that most of the time, but she would thinks that those people never had felt like they were less than their neighbors that imprisoned them.

She went back to the museum the next day. This time she went straight to the exhibit on World War II. It was terrible and eye-opening. The next day, she was back again, this time for World War I, since she wanted to know how Germany got to that point. The fourth day, she’d gone to a library and done research, and history may be written by the winners, but she can’t help but agree with them.

She does not know what possessed her to follow Hawkeye tonight. Something in Captain America’s stirring speech, something in the way they hauled her away from her burger as if she was a piece of luggage, something in the way she realized they never really told her what HYDRA stood for, something in the way she realized all she really knew about SHIELD was that they told her, and when what they told her about HYDRA was wrong, how could she trust them?

She tells Hawkeye all this in a string of nonsensical babble, and he seems to understand it. Then she realizes she can never go back, never unsay this, never unlearn what the museum taught her. She stops and swallows heavily, watching his face for a sign of something. But his placid expression is shows nothing and does not falter.

“Where do you come from, Jessica?” he asks calmly.

Her heart bursts into a horrible flurry of beats. She focuses on his heartbeat instead. It’s steady, much slower than hers. Slower than she thinks it should be. She stares at the clock on the desk and counts his heartbeat. Fifty beats a minute. Isn’t that unhealthy? She isn’t sure. Instead of answering his question, she says, “Your heart rate is slow.”

“It’s normal,” he says. “I exercise a lot.” Then he grins at her. “At least that’s what polite company calls it. Don’t worry. Medical wouldn’t send me anywhere if they thought something was wrong.”

“I’m not worried.”

“No, you’re stalling. I was helping you out.”

“Is this your interrogation technique? Bad jokes and sympathetic conversation?”

“I could break your bones if you prefer. I’m sure we have something to negate your powers.”

“I don’t come from anywhere.”

“Everyone comes from somewhere.”

“Well, _I_ don’t.”

“Spiders usually don’t.”

She knocks the clock off the desk in her shock. “What—What do you mean?”

“That’s what they say you are, isn’t it? A genetically modified spider?”

“Yes.”

“Except that makes zero sense and might be above our science. And SHIELD has the best scientists. So let’s try this again, Jessica. Where do you come from?”

“I don’t remember. There was a man—he called himself the High Evolutionary. He woke me from a sleep. I was in some sort of container. He said my name was Jessica Drew, and he could train me. He said no one was coming back for me ever again. I was alone, so I should stay with him. Then he left ea—earth. He left earth.”

“He left earth?” Hawkeye repeats doubtfully. “Okay, go on.”

“I was working as a barmaid in a pub in Transia. There was an accident with someone I knew, someone I—” it hurts to think _someone I loved_ , “someone who came around a lot. Some girls played a prank on me and I panicked and killed him accidentally. After that no one was interested in calling me anything but a witch so I ran. Straight into Otto.” She’s learned a lot about Otto Vermis. None of it has been useful. She hopes no one will ask her about him. “I didn’t—he gave me a place to stay. He fed me, and he told me I was okay. He told me—He never made me feel weird.”

“He needed your powers.”

“Yes.” It hurts to say, but she knows Hawkeye is right. “When I failed to kill Fury, he told me no one should have wasted time on mutating me, that I was better off being a spider.”

“It’s possible he believed that,” Hawkeye says blithely, carefully not looking at her as she wipes tears from her eyes. “Or it’s possible he knew that would upset you. Like I said, that would be a science beyond reckoning. Even the world’s biggest spider is much smaller than a grown woman, and you appear as fully human with powers. Easier to start with a human and mutate from there. Not that I would know. My science is limited to making explosions when necessary.”

She laughs reluctantly and without thought. _You win_ , she thinks. _I’m telling you everything._ “Your interrogation style works.”

“Of course it does,” and his voice dips into something more serious and gentle. “Some people just want someone to hear them out.”

She doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to be pitied. “What happens now?”

“Tell me everything you remember about where you stayed.”

–

Natasha wakes up from her medically induced coma forty two hours in. This does not particularly surprise SHIELD’s medical staff, although they want her down for longer, but she insists on getting up. Her bruises are gone and her body, while stiff and tender, is no longer sore. The medical team lets her go after a battery of tests, including waiting to see if she throws up the toast, banana, and apple juice they give her. 

She stumbles out of the medical ward, still wearing the gown they put her in. It doesn’t make sense to send someone up to her apartment when she lives on base, and it’s not like she wants someone she doesn’t trust in her apartment. She gets into her apartment and manages a shower. She gingerly gets dressed in loose fitting sweatpants and a shirt she stole from Clint during a mission. 

Lingering around her apartment is miserable so she makes her way up to HR. A few days before she left, she had a date with Laila. Laila dyes the tips of her black-blue hair lime green and she has a septum nose ring shaped like a dragon she wears almost daily. She wears bright Barbie-pink lipstick and always has her nails painted in a similar shade, and she wears only black and gold, often in lace. She talks with her hands and speaks in exclamations. Natasha always feels like taking life by the horns after she talks to her. She figures now is as good of a time as any.

Laila jumps up when Natasha enters her office. She’s on the phone, and the cord pulls, and Laila says with remarkable calmness for her, “I’m sorry, Mr. McKay. I’ll handle that as soon as possible,” which Natasha has learned means _maybe next week_ with HR. The personnel in HR has dwindled. A lot of people retired and they had yet to be replaced. And even before that, they probably didn’t have enough people. SHIELD is growing daily, even with the agents they lose in the field.

Laila hangs up the phone and crosses the room with impressive speed in her five inch heels. “You’re alive! I was so worried! The reports weren’t good!”

Natasha accepts the hug gratefully. “I’m not exactly human, remember.”

“Phish! Don’t say things like that!”

“I don’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to see you.”

“It’s fine! I missed you too! I just have to handle all the dead agents’ business for them.” This, surprisingly, is not said in exclamation but in fact Laila’s voice dips down to almost a whisper and the corners of her mouth tighten. No one likes dead agents. “I’m sure medical gave you something to eat,” she says, keeping her voice quiet, aware of the sudden tension from Natasha at the thought of the dead agents. 

Natasha smiles as evenly as she can. “They did. Toast and a banana. I should probably go rest,” she adds, suddenly feeling just weary. It hurts to breathe, and her legs feel like they don’t want to move. “I just wanted to see you.”

“I’ll check on you when I get off work,” Laila says lightly, studying her face as if there’s some breakable there. Natasha wonders what she sees. In her own mirror, she saw nothing but exhaustion. “I’ll bring toast and a banana.” 

“Thanks.”

Back in her own apartment, Natasha stares at the ceiling and waits for sleep to come. She does not know why it doesn’t; ever since her deprogramming it was easy to sleep, unburdened by memories and command she doesn’t know. But she can’t sleep right now for the first time in weeks. 

Her mind is blank. Her body is tender but immobile in bed, with her back to the pillow, she doesn’t feel it. She isn’t hungry or thirsty, and she isn’t too hot or too cold. She feels like she’s wrapped in a comfortable cocoon. But she has been laying in bed for two hours and sleep won’t come.

She gets up on hour three and heads downstairs into the main part of the building. Inside the busy web of desks, she feels even more tired. A few people greet her. Melinda May says hello distractedly as she passes by, dressed her pilot’s uniform and carrying a ring of keys, her phone pressed to one ear. Natasha wanders further into the maze and makes her way to Clint’s desk. 

She has not seen him in a while, and part of her feels like he ought to look different. But it’s just Clint, his hearing aids looped over the collar of his shirt, his fingers rhythmic on the keyboard, his face dear and familiar. She perches herself on the corner of his desk and notices how bare it is. He’d cleaned it out when he left and he must not feel the need to make it his own again. There used to be a pamphlet for a Barnum and Bailey show, and there was something about Cirque du Soleil, and there used to be a picture of Bobbi, wearing unflattering black glasses and bright red lipstick, grinning at whoever took the picture. She touches the spot it used to be at.

Her movement attracts Clint’s attention. He eyes her Garfield pajamas as he replaces his hearing aids and asks, “Aren’t you supposed to be in a coma right now?”

“I woke up this morning. I’m supposed to be resting but I can’t sleep. What are you doing?”

“Typing up a report.”

“I heard you were looking for Fury’s assassin.”

“I was.”

“Who was it?”

“A lonely girl HYDRA manipulated.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in your old room.”

Prison cell, Natasha wants to correct him. It was a prison cell. But she’s had worse rooms. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Thanks.”

“I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she says, but she doesn’t move. They’re friends, aren’t they? No reason why she can’t linger here for a while.

He watches her for a minute, his eyes disconcerting gray and clear, and hits a few buttons. “Come on,” he says. “I skipped lunch.”

“I’m not supposed to eat too much. And Laila will be bringing some stuff later.”

“Who’s Laila?”

“She works in HR.”

They get onto the elevator. Natasha is pretty sure he glares at her but when she turns her head to see him more fully he is looking at the numbers. “We went out on a date before I left,” she elaborates. “I went to see her after I got discharged. She’s kind of amazing.”

“Good. That’s good,” he says distractedly. His left hand folds down; she can see him pressing his thumb against his ring finger. He is not wearing his wedding ring either. 

“I’m sorry about Bobbi. I’m sorry for the role I played in it.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says reflexively. 

“You can tell me if you want me to leave you alone.”

He turns to her. The elevator stops and a couple of people she doesn’t know get on. Clint glances at them, greets them by name, asks how they’re doing. All the while Natasha is uncomfortably aware that his fingers are resting near hers on the metal bar. Had he even noticed he’d reached for her? 

The other two get off two floors below the cafeteria. Clint reaches for her when the door shut again. His fingers are on her arm, and she hates herself for the flush of warmth and giddiness. Will this stupid crush ever go away? 

“I missed you,” he admits quietly.

–

Natasha is halfway through another bottle of apple juice before they even acknowledge each other again. Clint is staring at his tray and not really eating, not that she blames him, since the spinach salad looks anemic and the pasta is mostly sauce. He twirls a few strands of spaghetti on his fork and puts it back down without eating. “It was my fault. Your… divorce thing,” she waves her hand. It hurts her arm.

“We’re not getting divorced,” Clint says.

“Separation then. It was my fault.”

“No, it really wasn’t.”

“I don’t believe you. And you know why?”

“You like to blame yourself for things you can control so you don’t feel as guilty for setting a hospital on fire?”

She kicks him under the table. It probably hurts her more than it hurts him—her entire leg goes stiff then numb from the reverberation. She massages her thigh. “Maybe,” she admits. “But Bobbi snapped at me during the mission and I got the feeling she didn’t want to be around me some of the time.”

“It’s not your fault,” he repeats. “I’m a mess.”

“We always knew that.”

“Thanks.” He aims for sarcasm but he falls short. She can hear the dejected misery underneath it.

“What happened between you two?”

“I think I’m an albatross around her neck. I guess I can’t blame her. If I could walk away from myself I would.”

“You need therapy.”

“Fury’s way ahead of you. Dr. Anderson is going to get sick of me soon.”

“Is it helping?”

“I guess.”

She takes another sip of apple juice. It’s not her favorite drink but it goes down easier than even water. The doctor told her she probably needed the sugars. “I really have missed you. But I don’t want to get in the way between you two.”

“There isn’t anything between us.” He eats a bite of spinach salad. Natasha resists the urge to ask how it tastes. “How are you feeling?” he asks before she can come up with something else.

“Tired. But not tired enough to sleep.”

“You could read something. Dostoyevsky maybe. That should be boring enough.”

Last time she argued that _Crime and Punishment_ was a masterpiece, his response was, “I know. It takes real talent to write a book large enough to kill someone with.” She has doubts about that, but she never got the chance to ask. Soon enough, they were being shot at, and this was before they were really partners so when they made their escape, they went separate ways and there were other things to talk about when they finally met again. But since she has the time now… “You didn’t actually kill someone with Crime and Punishment.”

“You’re right. It was _War and Peace.”_

“That’s not Dostoyevsky,” she says even though she’s pretty sure Clint knows that. “And no book could kill someone.”

“I’m surprised you never thought of it as a weapon. It was a collector’s edition. Hardcover leather bound. Wielded with enough force, it probably could have knocked a steel door down.”

“You’re screwing with me.”

“Okay, maybe not a steel door.”

Natasha sighs. She isn’t sure if she’s annoyed or amused, but she is too tired to care that much. “Maybe I’ll try to sleep again.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

She gets up. The movement takes a lot of energy she doesn’t have. When she slaps her hands on the table to steady herself, Clint is at her side in a heartbeat. He loops his arm around her. “I’m fine,” she says. “Finish eating.”

“You’re white.”

“I’m always white.”

“Well, you’re whiter than usual.”

“I just got a little dizzy there. I’m fine.”

“Don’t be stubborn.”

“Pot, kettle.”

_“Natashenka.”_

“Can’t you call me Tasha like normal people do?”

“Whatever. Come on. Let me take you up.” He drags her onto her feet more steadily. On a normal day, she would struggle with him. But right now, she’s uncomfortably aware that her body doesn’t seem to want to function. She grabs for her bottle of juice and finds her fingers too numb to handle it. Clint grabs the bottle before it hits the ground. 

Rebecca Majors is at her other side before she can argue with Clint further. Rebecca smiles at her, the corners of her lips pinched a little in worry. “Did you escape medical, Romanoff?” she asks with false cheer.

“No, they let me go. I just couldn’t sleep.”

“I thought all three of you were in an induced coma.”

“Red Room,” Natasha reminds her. “Tell Clint I can get back to my apartment by myself.”

“I don’t think so,” Rebecca and Clint say in unison. Rebecca grins. “I’ll take you up, Romanoff. Clint has his hands full with a pretty young girl.”

“Have you replaced me?”

“Were you ever young and pretty?” he asks.

Natasha manages a weak kick, just because she can.

–

Jessica spends three days wondering if SHIELD intends to torture her with boredom and loneliness. Even at HYDRA people spoke to her more often than they do here. Hawkeye visited her the first day and Fury visited her that night, listening to her carefully and seemingly not too terribly angry about her accidentally knocking him out. The next day, she spent most of the day testing out her powers on the unbreakable walls. Yesterday, she tried to secrete pheromones to make the guards who brought her food fall madly in lust with her. Today, she intended to try again but Hawkeye wanders into the room a few hours after lunch. He hands her a bottle of Coke. She only ever drank it once since she’s been in America, but she’s eager enough for another taste. With running water in her cell, no one brings her anything else to drink. They replace her cup every morning with a clean one and that’s it. She takes a sip and says, “You have more questions, don’t you?”

“No. I thought you might need some company. The security footage shows you practicing your powers. What were you trying to do yesterday?”

She shrugs. “I can secrete pheromones. Make people fall desperately in lust with me or make them afraid or repulsed. I never could control it. I was trying to see if I could do it.”

“Mostly the guards felt like they ought to have knocked you out.”

She already knew this. She can hear a lot of what goes on outside her cell. “I guess it didn’t work then.”

“I think Fury would appreciate you not trying to make any agents fall desperately in lust with you.”

“Are you sure you don’t have questions?”

“Lots of them but I’m pretty sure you can’t answer them. I’d like to take you up to medical for a few blood samples. The sci-tech department wants to see what they can make of your powers. It’s not a big deal,” he adds, so her horror must show on her face. “Every prisoner gets their blood drawn regardless of their level of humanity. SHIELD does a full battery of tests. It’s just a needle, it’ll be over in a heartbeat, and you don’t have to do anything. Maybe keep the Coke until after. You’ll need some sugar. They’ll give you a cookie, but it’s cafeteria food so it might as well be a chocolate chip studded metal disc.”

Jessica debates saying no, but she also is aware she doesn’t have much of a choice and that Hawkeye is playing nice. She reluctantly stands, her fingers gripping the bottle with enough force that he reaches out and pries it from her fingers. “Exploding bottles aren’t much fun,” he says easily as he rises. “Let’s go.”

He doesn’t put her in any restraints. He just leads her up through a dozen floors—this base feels about thirty stories high and the prisons are down in the basement. A man in scrubs meets them at the medical floor. He leads them into a small and gestures for Jessica to sit. Hawkeye leans against the wall, and as the medic fixes the needle, Jessica focuses on the swing of her Coke bottle between Hawkeye’s fingers. He taps it, back and forth, hitting the wall and the edge of his thigh. She can hear the clink of the plastic on the wall, can hear the scrape of it against his jeans. It’s drowned out by the click of a needle and outside, by medical personnel speaking. Jessica can pick out entire conversations. The double steel doors of her prison cell make it difficult to hear anything beyond what her guards were saying (not much), but here with only concrete and wood she can hear most of the conversations. She memorizes as much as she can, thinking she will take it back to HYDRA. Except she already made her choice, and they will kill her as a traitor if she even tries to go back. For the first time, she thinks she’s okay with that. 

She feels the pinch of the needle and watches the blood drip out. Eight tubes of blood and when that’s over, Hawkeye hands her the Coke before the medic lets her get up. She drinks half the bottle and lets Hawkeye lead her back to the cell. “You have more questions, don’t you?” she asks again. 

“I have lots of questions,” he says. “I’m not sure what you can answer though. Do you remember anything from your past?”

“From—when?”

“Before the High Evolutionary. Do you have any memories that don’t fit into the after?”

Jessica takes a second to think about it but mostly she’s annoyed. She’s already answered this question. “No. I can’t remember anything.”

“How old were you when you woke up?”

“I don’t know. Sixteen, seventeen?”

He looks her over. She knows what he’s thinking. She’s only about twenty two now. “Tell me more about the High Evolutionary. Did he have a real name? Was he even human?”

This time she genuinely thinks about it. “I think he was human. He said—he said my family was dead. I think he knew me. Before. I think he knew me before. He said I wasn’t supposed to have powers. ‘You were supposed to be cured, Jessica’ is what he said. I heard him muttering to himself one time about me. I think I was in that containment unit for longer than I was supposed to be.” Jessica turns over the memories in her head and nods to herself. It seems right.

“The High Evolutionary’s real name was apparently Dr. Herbert Wyndham. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Why did you ask me if you knew?”

“I want to know what _you_ know.”

“Not much,” she says bitterly. “I don’t recognize the name at all—but if I’m human, maybe he knew my family? He spoke to me as if he knew me before.”

“It’s possible. I’ll see if we can find any matches in Transia for a Drew, but that’s more of an English name. And you have a posh English accent. You come from a well-educated family. People like that don’t just disappear without a trace. But this was decades ago. Before computers. A missing persons report, a passport, a birth certificate… these things might not be easily accessible.”

“Which means you can’t do anything.”

“Tell me the truth, Jessica. There’s something you’re hiding.”

Hawkeye’s voice is low and soothing, the cadence richly inviting her confidences. This is how he is dangerous, she thinks. HYDRA told her about his ability to hit his targets one hundred percent of the time, told her about his kills and the organizations he took down, about his ability to blend into a crowd and never be found. They did not tell her he would appear genuinely sympathetic and intentionally ludicrous and that he would be able to tear down her defenses with painful ease.

Then again, maybe they did not know. They did not train her for this after all.

“You arrested a man named Jared a couple months ago,” she begins without really thinking. All of a sudden she feels tired and confused, and it might be from the blood loss, but she doesn’t feel weak. She just feels like she wants to curl up in bed and sleep for a dozen years, and he can deal with this for her. “SHIELD did, I mean. He was my lover. They told me I should kill Nick Fury as revenge. And I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I’d never killed before—on purpose. I never killed on purpose.” She thinks of Milorad and his dark bright eyes. Luckily Hawkeye doesn’t interrupt, just stays silent, his gray eyes fixed on her. “I couldn’t do it. I had a gun in my hand and I was prepared to pull the trigger, and all I could think was _I can never take this back_. Isn’t that stupid?”

“No,” he says, voice rich with a feeling she can’t identify. “You were right. You would never be able to take that back.”

She swipes at the tears on her cheek and wonders if he would take back his first kill if he could. “I killed my boyfriend. In Transia. That’s who I killed. You know about that?”

“I know what I’ve heard.”

“What did you hear?”

For a moment, she thinks he’ll turn the interrogation back on her, but after a few beats he says, “Someone pulled a prank on you, you accidentally killed your boyfriend with your powers out of surprise, and they accused you of being a witch and ran you out of town.”

“That’s about right. Do witches exist?”

“Lots of things exist in this world. I wouldn’t claim to know even half of them.”

“HYDRA was mad at me. I thought I’d try again but then I watched the HYDRA and Captain America films and...”

“Okay. That’s enough for today. I’ll see what I can find. I’ll check on the name Drew and on Jared. I’ll drop off some books for you to read so you don’t get too bored. What would you like?”

“History, please. I need to know what I missed.”

–

Bobbi wakes up in stages and immediately sleeps again for hours. When she wakes up fully for a second time, the doctors sit her up, give her some water, and Melinda shows up.

“I broke Amanda’s fairy mirror.”

“You always hated it,” Bobbi says slowly, the words feeling heavy on her tongue.

“Tell her it was an accident.”

“I doubt it.”

“It was!” Mel sits down in the visitor’s chair. “You know how I am after one of Georgina’s vodka cocktails.”

“I thought they were gin.”

“I definitely saw her put vodka in there. And Amanda, when she was still speaking to me, saw her put in white rum.”

Bobbi winces. No wonder one of Georgina’s cocktails is enough to knock them out. It’s been years since Bobbi’s been brave enough to have one. Hangovers only get worse the older you get. “What happened to the mirror?”

“My hand gestures were a little too broad. How are you feeling? Hill woke up a couple of hours ago too, and Romanoff’s been up for a couple of days, haunting the halls in children’s pajamas. When’s her birthday? I’m buying her something that doesn’t have cartoon characters on it.”

“It was April, I think. She doesn’t really celebrate it.” Bobbi shifts so the pillow isn’t jammed into her neck.

“I’ll wait until Christmas.”

“Amanda’s birthday is soon, isn’t it? Are you going to get her a new fairy mirror?”

“Do they make ones where the fairy is wearing something other than a corset and thigh highs?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Maybe I’ll ask LeAnn. She likes fairies, doesn’t she? She’s always dressed like some sort of woodland sprite.”

“You can ask.”

“You didn’t answer me. How are you doing?”

“Right now I’m numb.”

“It’s the morphine. You’ve been on a constant drip of it.”

“Remind me to ask them to stop.”

Melinda frowns at her. “You’ve broken a lot of bones, Bobbi. Don’t be stubborn about this. I know you’re terrified of a morphine addiction, but this isn’t the time to worry about it. You won’t be able to move without painkillers.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’re obsessed with morphine addiction,” Melinda says. “I get it. Mommy’s an alcoholic and daddy’s a nymphomaniac. And hubby’s dangerously fond of drug-and-alcohol cocktails. Get over it, Morse. You’ve never been addicted to anything in your life, and you’re in pain.”

“Please never say the word hubby again,” Bobbi says. “I don’t want morphine.”

Melinda stands abruptly and walks out the door. Bobbi watches after her, wondering if she’s coming back or not. She takes a sip of water and leans her head back. Her neck is stiff. They’ve been keeping her head up to reduce the swelling in her face. The longer she focuses on her body, the more pains and aches she feels, but nothing is too bad. Her face twinges with every swallow. Every breath pinches at her ribs. One of her hands is useless, and the water glass feels too heavy, feels like it’s dragging her wrist down, if she holds it too long. Melinda is probably right and she shouldn’t worry but morphine addiction is one of those weird, nonsensical fears of hers, the only one she can think of. Her job takes the fear out of just about everything else.

Melinda returns several minutes later with a doctor. Michael. He’s patched her up a dozen times before. He looks over Bobbi and says, “Agent May says you don’t want any more morphine. Is that correct? May I ask why?”

“Laugh if you want, Michael, but I have a deep set fear of morphine addiction.”

“It’s not a joke. We’ll try tramadol. I’ll get a nurse in here to change out the medicine. Would you like to try some food now? We have some bananas. They should be easy on the stomach.”

Bobbi nods an agreement. Melinda retakes the seat, and Michael leaves. “How are you going to get around when you leave here?” Melinda asks. “You live alone.”

Bobbi almost says, _No I don’t_ , before she remembers. Strange not to be going home to Clint. “I’ll get someone to stay with me if I need to. But I’ve conducted missions with broken bones. I think I’ll survive.”

“You can go stay with your parents.”

“Not if my life depended on it.”

“I could come stay with you. I have some vacation days stored up.”

“No.” Mel had the worst bedside manner ever.

Mel taps the arm of the chair. “Barton’s been living in your house.”

“I know. That was the plan. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“You could go home to him, I guess. Not that he’s here. He’s in London for some reason. All connected to Fury’s would-be assassin and her HYDRA connections.”

“What’s going on there?”

“Her name is Jessica Drew. She was picked up by HYDRA. Barton’s keeping everything close to the chest though. Most of the information is not in the system. Rumors are flying why that is. Jessica’s prison cell isn’t recording anything. It’s a black spot.”

“That’s unusual.”

“It’s also against protocol. I guess it doesn’t matter since Fury decides protocol. There has to be a reason for it but I can’t think of one. The rumors are too over the top to be true.”

“Should we worry?”

“About Fury?”

“HYDRA. If they trained someone without us knowing about it when they haven’t been seen as anything more than loosely connected assholes with Nazi tendencies in years, that’s a problem.”

“That’s what Barton argued to the Council during a meeting before he left. They don’t think it’s a big deal. That’s the only reason I know anything about it at all. Fury needed backup so he called in some people he trusted the most. I only know what they said during the meeting, and that wasn’t anything near enough. Fury says he’s worried about another assassination attempt.”

“And the Council bought that?”

“Yes. And I guess it could be true.”

“I guess.”

The nurse comes in. She asks some questions, fixes the medicine, gives Bobbi a banana. She chews it slowly. “Everything is a mess right now.”

“Yep,” Mel says, popping the p. “On the plus side—and this is common knowledge—Jessica Drew recognized a symbol in the child poison case. The Dubiki crime family. Romanoff knows them too. They used to be big time but they aren’t much these days. Poisons weren’t their specialty when Romanoff knew them, but they’ve sided with HYDRA now so anything’s possible.”

–

Bobbi dreams about HYDRA and Captain America. She had wanted to be Captain America when she was younger, and working with Dr. Wilma Calvin on recreating the serum would have been interesting. But SHIELD felt like a better bet at least at the time. Sometimes she wonders if she would change her mind if given half the chance. Then again, Wilma had betrayed her once. Working with her might have been difficult.

She wakes with a twinge of her ribs. In her own bed, sleeping is much more difficult. That and showering. Food is easy, at least, courtesy of Clint leaving several containers of neatly stacked food in the freezer. For her, specifically, which doesn’t bear thinking about. His note, scrawled out with its familiar rush of scribbles, reads: _Since you’re injured. I cleared out. Hope you feel better, Clint._ It is strange to read a note from him that isn’t signed with _Love, Clint._

Bobbi warms up some rice and breakfast sausages which is about all she can manage. Her entire face hurts when she chews. Clint also bought her a box of instant oatmeal but even that feels like more work than she can handle right now. She discards the breakfast sausages and just eats the rice. She watches the news for a couple of hours. She finally makes some oatmeal and manages to keep that down. She watches some daytime television, sitcom reruns, and a Christian preacher wanting money. As the day goes on, she becomes more and more aware of her restlessness. She’s too injured to go anywhere on her own, and she’s more or less trapped here. Clint isn’t around to help her out, and with a sinking feeling she remembers he won’t be for a while. Her choice but it still stings. 

At the same time, she knows it was the best decision. Looking back, their relationship had always been a little messy and precarious. And his issues had always taken center stage, and there were lots of them. Bobbi realizes now, years later, that their problems started a few year ago. Clint, coming off a horrible mission that left him off kilter, had been sullen and irritable during their entire two week vacation. Trapped in their ranch house in Colorado, on a stretch of 500 acres with her husband doing nothing but working his way through two cartons of cigarettes and fifteen bottles of whiskey, she couldn’t remember being anything other than miserable. With no transportation and nothing nearby anyway, she was trapped and by the end she was as crotchety as he was. But when they arrived back in New York, he was suddenly okay again, and Bobbi had thought—had hoped—that all he had needed was to mope for a while. She ought to have known better. 

She ought not to have married him at all, really. Looking back, their conversations and meetings were filled with business or sex, and there was a lot she hadn’t known about him. His jealousy, his heavy drinking, for one, and his tendency to veer into morose without warning or noticeable cause. His messiness, his proclivity for horrible jokes and puns and his inability to shut up for any length of time and his infuriating ability to stay calm when he’s sober, his easily aroused anger when he’s been drinking. He complained a lot for the first few years. He veers into the dramatic, a trait SHIELD has tempered somewhat. 

But even as she lists things off in her head, she knows he could do the same with her. He has complained about how often she buys meretricious things and how aloof she could be in the beginning, before she realized Clint needed a lot more attention than she could handle receiving herself, and how she could impatient with his frugality. After all, he’d grown up with nothing and whatever her parents’ faults were, she always had money. Her father even wrote her a check when she said she was moving to New York City for a job to get her started. 

Clint envied her ability to step outside of her emotions and be as impartial as someone could be, and when she did it in their relationship, he resented her. Her tendency to buy food she never ate, the rigid routines she stuck to for everything from cleaning the house to cooking, the way she tended to linger over her food at a restaurant when he doesn’t see the point in it. A thousand little things that irritate them about each other.

But there has always been reasons to love each other. A respect that had been missing from her previous relationships. The way slipping into his arms had been, right from the start, the easiest, most natural thing in the world. His gentle teasing when she got too opinionated, as she was wont to do when she was younger, before she stopped taking herself so seriously. The fact that she could share anything with him without judgment.

And she had never regretted marrying him, not even now, but she knows it was the right decision to walk away for a bit. But it was also the hardest decision she’d ever made, and walking through the house is a dispiriting experience. This is a home they built together and the absence of his things makes for a miserable experience.

She’s grateful when Fury calls and asks her if they can use her house as a rendezvous point. She has no idea why but she forces herself to do something. The house is clean, everything neatly put away to her standards and hers alone, which is surprisingly disheartening to see. 

She takes out some things from the pantry, a bag of chips, some beef jerky, a box of crackers, a box of European chocolates that are expiring next month. She puts some sodas in the freezer to chill and manages to get dressed in something that isn’t a silk nightgown. She attempts to wriggle into jeans but that proves to be too painful. Her bruises are mostly healed but her body is still tender. She tries sweatpants, but it’s too hot. Finally she settles for a pair of worn flannel pajama pants she stole from Clint a lifetime ago and a tank top. She really hopes whoever comes to this meeting won’t point out that the shirt is semi-sheer due to wear.

Fury and McKay come first. Hill and Natasha come next. Then the others trickle in—Melinda, Rebecca, Coulson, Gordon, Antonio, Nalini, Robert, Gin. The people Fury trusts most at the base, minus Clint and plus Natasha. When they are all seated around the living room with drinks, Fury launches into why he called them there. He tells them about Jessica Drew and what they know. Then he drops the bombshell on them. “Arachne was asked to look through a series of pictures to see who she recognized. Two of the ones she noted are agents of ours.”

Everyone looks suitably grim. 

“One of them is on a mission. The other one has a drinking issue. He fell off his roof last night.”

Natasha rolls her eyes and mutters something in Russian.

McKay clears his throat and adds, “Before he died, he did manage to give us some information. HYDRA’s been approaching our agents attempting to get them to spill secrets. They haven’t given up enough to cause many problems, but we now know they were behind the prison glitch and the problems that plagued Agent Barton, Agent Romanoff, and Dr. Morse earlier this year and last year. He gave up several more names. We will need to remove them from SHIELD as quickly as possible.

“One of them is in London where Agent Barton is. He will neutralize the traitor. The others—”

“Are your problem,” Fury finishes. “All of you, and Barton, were mentioned as incorruptible and unlikely to betray me.” Natasha snorts again; no one in this rooms thinks anyone is incorruptible. “So we’re going to deal with this, and we’re gonna have to do it away from base. Starting now. Gordon, you’re taking a vacation to Colorado. Caleb Allans works at the Vault. Interrogate and neutralize.” Fury hands him a file. “All of his bad traits to exploit. Make it look like an accident. Hell, get one of the inmates to kill him if you need to. I noted who we’re willing to make a deal with. Another one is on a mission in Uruguay. Sanchez, that’s you.” Antonio nods and takes his file. “Mishra, Jaipur. He’s on vacation. I know you wanted to visit your family anyway.” Nalini smiles to herself. She’s an older agent, well into her forties but shows no sign of slowing down, and she always manages to look amused. Fury trained her. “Coulson, pay a visit to our base in South Africa. May, you’re officially on vacation in Venice. Gin—” No one ever calls him anything but Gin, not even Fury “—Amman. We have reason to believe this target needs someone to keep an eye on him anyway. Make sure he hasn’t made any deals with their government before you kill him. There’s another somewhere in England; I’ll get Barton on him too. Michaels, Alaska. Rebecca, Sri Lanka. Romanoff, Ukraine. All of your targets are on group missions. Tread carefully. Hill, medical will kill me if I send you anywhere so you’ll do McKay’s job while he does yours.”

Hill nods. She looks a little green. About the amount of paperwork, the trust implied, or the fact that she has to work directly under Fury. He continues, “Morse, you’re going home. Seagate Prison. You’re still on medical leave, but I’ve told them you’ll be visiting your parents. We created a fake threat to you so they’ll cbeck up on you. They have a roster of five guards, one of which is our target. 

“Report to Hill or me only when your mission is complete. We have burner phones. Don’t discuss this, and make it believable. The only people who know where you are are the people in this room. Officially, you’re somewhere else. Don’t be seen. Except you,” Fury adds to Bobbi. “We have a legitimate excuse there.”

Bobbi doubts anyone who’s spent more than an hour with her thinks she’ll visit her parents happily, but then again, there are few secrets at SHIELD. Everyone knows she’s living alone, and they know her father had a heart attack. Maybe they’ll assume she needs some help.

They’re right, but her parents have never been the sort of help she needs.

–

Clint spends three days going through every file the London Metropolitan Police have dating back to the turn of the century. The last century that is. It takes the better part of two weeks, and he isn’t convinced he has any useful information. Drew is common enough to cause problems, and by the end of it he is holding onto about eighty files. He goes through them again, discarding files that are too new to be relevant. After that, he has seventy three. So he takes them back to the London base and goes through them all over again until he’s pretty sure he’s no longer keeping them straight. There are no Jessica Drews. There are no reports on Dr. Herbert Wyndham, and there is nothing on the High Evolutionary except a footnote written by Director Carter way back in 1969 when he left earth—somehow. There were more important things to follow up on, namely Russia.

Clint spends the next two weeks visiting the families. He uses a false name and a variety of stories to gain access and ask questions, but he finds nothing useful. Mostly he just feels uncomfortable and like an asshole for bringing back people’s memories of their long-lost, almost certainly dead family members.

He sinks into the bath at his hotel room, grateful he was able to argue himself away from the base. He’d been here with Bobbi once, in this very room, and although the memories are bittersweet, there’s a vague sense of satisfaction. He will survive her leaving somehow. He can sleep in this room and not be taunted by happier times. Mostly. She didn’t need to be here for him to be in love with her. And one day, they’ll get back together.

_Or she’ll realize she’s better off without you._ Clint jerks at the little voice in the back of his head. Okay, so he’s mostly doing okay. If he holds on to the hope that she won’t want to walk away at the end of this, whenever the end of this is. A few weeks without each other, and he’ll try harder, and everything will be just fine. Clint climbs out of the bath, wincing at how sore his body feels and makes a mental note not to train with overeager twenty year olds just out of the Academy. They always manage to make him feel old.

A phone rings. Not his phone which is in his hand and not the hotel room phone. He follows the sound to the kitchenette and finds the phone in a drawer with packets of coffee. “Hello?”

“Good, you got it,” Fury says. He launches into a speech about what’s going on. Clint rifles through the coffee and assorted paraphernalia to find the folders Fury says are there buried underneath. He scans them as Fury talks. 

“If they’re not guilty?”

“You’re the only one who asked that Barton. What do you think?”

Unfortunately, Clint knows the answer. Once interrogated, they’re dead anyway. He’s the only one who doesn’t want that to be true. He hangs up the phone, reads the files, and decides there’s no time like the present.

He tracks down the first person easily. At a pub, like half of working class London. James Emerson, Cornwall born and raised, who accidentally fell into SHIELD’s ranks. He’s the one Jessica pointed out, and according to Fury, he has created a safe place for Otto Vermis in London. Clint takes a seat in the other side of the pub and orders something to make him look like he belongs here. With his workman’s clothes and his best attempt at a Cockney accent—just about the only English accent he can manage well enough—no one looks twice at him. When James leaves, he follows him to his apartment. He slides in the door just before the man shuts the door and takes up a position in the corner. James doesn’t bother to turn any lights on; still tipsy from the amount of ale he consumed; he kicks his shoes off and peels off his clothes on the way to the bedroom. Clint waits. When he sees the light go off and hears the sounds of someone settling into bed, he makes his way silently across the apartment. 

James jerks when he opens the door. He throws a knife, but his aim is off, and Clint doesn’t even have to duck for the knife to slam into the wall somewhere near his waist. “I’ve seen better throws from five year olds,” he comments as he picks it up. “Don’t be silly, Emerson. You know why I’m here.”

“No, I don’t. Who are you?”

“They call me Hawkeye.”

James blinks drunkenly at him. “You work for us.”

“I work for SHIELD.”

James blinks again. Clint can practically hear the wheels turning in his head and he sees the exact moment the meaning gets through to James. James throws another knife; Clint catches it midair and advances on the bed. James scrambles out of bed, revealing he went to bed naked. There aren’t any clothes nearby, so Clint assumes he won’t be foolish enough to run into the street naked. Although it would be easier to make it look like an accident.

“We need to talk, James,” he says. He sets the knife on the dresser and moves away from it. “Sit down.”

“I’m good.”

“Sit.”

James falls back into bed.

–

Clint leaves the apartment and slips into the shadows. He gives it three hours tops before someone finds the body. He manages a nap and a shower. He stumbles into breakfast, takes the papers offered to him by one of the base’s junior agents and pours coffee into himself until he feels human again. He reads through new reports. The only truly new piece of information is the discovery of a 1935 paper written by Herbert Wyndham and _Jonathan Drew. ___

__Clint is so surprised that a possible lead has been found that he knocks over his coffee cup. Oh well. It was his eighth. Probably for the best, he thinks as he wipes it clean._ _

__He’s out of the building as soon as he can research Jonathan Drew, which doesn’t take nearly as long as he expected. Their programs managed to track him through the university he worked at, and in less than half hour he had come up with a current address. A nursing home, unfortunately, but it’s here in London so it doesn’t take too long to get there._ _

__Jonathan Drew is ninety two but his eyes are alert. He doesn’t have dementia and he is still a sharp mind. Clint sits down on the visitor’s chair in his room and watches the man watch him. He wants to know what a SHIELD agent wants from him. And Clint can tell he has his ideas about that._ _

__“What can you tell me about Dr. Herbert Wyndham?” Clint asks to start with._ _

__“He was arrogant. All scientists are, you know.”_ _

__Clint inclines his head in acknowledgment._ _

__Jonathan sighs. “He thought he was better than everyone. But he was brilliant. Oh, you don’t know how brilliant he was. We were going to do amazing things. We were going to alter genetic codes. We couldn’t do it at Oxford so we went to Transia. But everything unraveled.” The man looked impossibly sad for a moment._ _

__Feeling like a terrible person, Clint jumped on that comment. “In what way?”_ _

__“My daughter got sick. Jessica. There was so much uranium in the mountains. She was dying. Do you have children, Mr. Barton?”_ _

__“No.”_ _

__“It’s a certain kind of hell, watching your child die. She was unconscious by the end. Unnaturally high fever. Herbert was arrogant, yes, but he helped me. We put her in suspended animation and injected her with a spider serum we were working on. Herbert had some technology he thought would help.”_ _

__“Experimenting on your daughter wasn’t wise.”_ _

__“No. But she was going to die if I didn’t. Her mother agreed.”_ _

__“What happened to your wife?”_ _

__“There are werewolves in the mountains of Transia. You don’t believe me, Mr. Barton. But there are, or there were. She and my son were mauled to death. I returned to England, and Herbert promised to write me when Jessica awoke. But she never did. He wrote me a couple years and said she died in the end.” Another impossibly sad look. What was Wyndham’s game? This was too much of a coincidence for it not to be the same Jessica. Why hadn’t Wyndham told her father she was awake? Jessica said he’d told her no one would be back for her when her father was waiting for her to wake. He’d known all along where she belonged and it wasn’t in the mountains that made her sick._ _

__“Your daughter is actually why I’m here,” Clint says._ _

__Jonathan refocuses on him. “What?”_ _

__“A Jessica Drew, genetically modified with spider powers, appeared on SHIELD’s radar. She was trained by the High Evolutionary, who SHIELD knows to previously be a Dr. Herbert Wyndham.” Clint pulls a photo of her from the file in his hand and shows it to him. Jonathan’s face falters. Feeling guilty, Clint continues, “She’s alive. She ages at a severely decreased rate from what we can tell. And she has no memories of anything before waking up.”_ _

__“Can—Can I see her?”_ _

__Knowing it’s not in his power to make that promise, he makes it anyway._ _


	4. i'll be your poison tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's play some fun games: How Do You Write? and my personal favorite, Why Can't You Stick To Your Damn Outline? Super sorry about the wait but that's what happens when you have to rewrite and re-plan because you went off on a tangent and you liked it too much
> 
> WARNINGS: Gruesomeness, violence against children, drug addiction, alcoholism

Bobbi completes her mission on a Tuesday night in the middle of wooded park where her fellow high school classmates used to go to make out. At the time she hadn’t know what that was, being younger than them, and now, she thinks as she surveys the area, still and silent as the cops’ flashlights sweep over her target’s dead body, she can’t imagine why they came. There’s nothing particularly romantic about a cluster of dense trees that holds a bunch of insects and rattlesnakes.

But then she’s never been a romantic.

The cops’ lights sweep over the area again, never quite hitting where she is. Soon she will have to move but her legs are trembling underneath her. She pushed herself too hard. It’s been too long since her last dose of pain medicine. Her lungs are burning and her legs are close to giving out on her. Her heels are broken and barefoot isn’t the best thing to be in these woods. If she lets herself be found, they will not be able to find her in the system and eventually that will lead them to SHIELD. If she can convince the Council that she didn’t commit this crime but instead it was the phantom stalker SHIELD created for her leave, it would be fine. They could fake someone’s death, fake the stalking and the worry. If she can’t… this is not a sanctioned mission. Fury won’t be able to protect her. He’s fond of her but keeping the agency alive and functioning is his priority. He will let her fall to keep them alive and she can’t blame him.

She has a feeling she would not be able to convince them. Her record is against her in this; she can fight on the brink of death, has done so before. No one will believe she couldn’t take down one assailant.

She takes a deep breath and ignores the itching, burning sensations in her ribs. She forces herself to stand and braves the rattlesnakes in bare feet, her shoes dangling from her hands. She steps carefully and listens for the sound of hissing snakes but can’t hear anything over the garbled static of the cops’ radios and their shouts.

She had to pick a night the cops were patrolling this area. All they expected to find were horny or high teenagers.

A figure materializes in the trees. Bobbi hesitates, aware of the bloody knife still in her hand. She doesn’t have the best sight—all the light is behind her, and it comes only from passing flashlights and silent blue and red sirens flashing—and she’s not convinced she can raise her arm enough to throw it anyway. Her shoulder is so stiff it’s nearly immobile. 

But then the figure steps out of the shadows and under the lights, Bobbi sees familiar features. Barney. What her brother in law is doing here is beyond her—and he seems equally surprised. She holds a finger to her lips and extends her other hand willing him to take it. He does and he lets her stumble into him. After a few steps, he just picks her up and carries her out to the other side.

In a parking lot, underneath the dim streetlights, Barney looks her over. She doesn’t want to know what she looks like, but at least she’s certain that the only thing that bit her were mosquitoes. His eyes catch on the bloody knife in her hand. “I thought you were injured,” he says finally. He looks her over again. “I guess I should say I thought SHIELD didn’t send you out injured.”

“I was visiting my parents anyway,” she tells him. He doesn’t believe her but he doesn’t ask. He knows she won’t tell him. 

“Are you okay?”

“The cops were patrolling tonight. And I’ve used up all I could. I just want to buy some painkillers and go home and take a bath.”

“I’ll take you to the store.” He opens the car door and she gingerly get in.

“Aren’t you here for a reason?”

“Yeah but if the cops are around, I’m guessing my guy isn’t. Not that I expected him to be here anyway.”

“What’s up?”

“Rapist and murderer known for going after teenage girls. His kills have popped all along the east coast, so it’s FBI territory now. Someone suggested we check out areas teenagers hang out.” Barney eyes the place skeptically.

“When I was in high school, it was the go to place for making out.”

“How do you know? You were twelve.”

“They explained it to me. It sounded gross.”

He grins.

It still sounds gross, Bobbi muses as they slide to a stop in front of a store. Some things should only be experienced and never explained. Not in detail like that. Not that whatever the girl’s name was had been wrong. It’s just that it was gross enough that Bobbi hadn’t wanted to try it for a long time.

Barney comes back fifteen minutes later. He hands her a soda, a bag of chips, and a bottle of Aleve. Under the yellow glow of the store sign and street lamps, Barney looked incredibly exhausted. Like all agents, children and rape were a combination you never wanted to see. 

They’d all seen it far too often. 

“You need rest,” she says, brushing her hand over his forehead, ignoring the pain in her shoulder when she moved.

“So do you,” he says, doubtfully eying the way she tried to open the bottle. He takes it from her and opens it. “What happened to you? This had to happen over days.”

“It’s been a month or so.” Her ribs are mostly healed. Her body is mainly sore and stiff these days. Her cover for being in Georgia was that a killer was after her. They’d chosen one they knew they’d catch—and Natasha had easily already caught him—and told Bobbi his typical way of killing so she could kill her target like that. But other than getting her target to disappear somewhere quietly with her—also easy; like so many men she knew, he was easily entranced by her play of injured heartbreak over her so-called divorce—she had nothing to do while here. And since spending time with her parents was a one way ticket to her own personal hell, she’d managed a fair bit of rest and relaxation alone in the privacy of her room.

“Not what I asked,” he says.

“The Council decided sleep was for suckers. They’re lucky they weren’t in a room with Fury. He might have killed them. Agents were ill from lack of sleep and proper nutrition.” She doesn’t need to say more. The Council is notorious for wanting great success rates but not willing to give their agents what they needed to get those rates.

“Am I taking you to your parents?”

“Unfortunately.”

His lips twitch. “Same address?”

Her mother spent fifteen years making that house the embodiment of what she wanted, and Barney knew it. He’d been subjected to a two hour conversation about it once. “I haven’t told them about Clint and me. They already think I’m a failure.”

“Yeah, getting a PhD at twenty—serious failure there, sis.”

–

Bobbi spends the next day at SHIELD, making up stories about how she definitely wasn’t there. They believe her. It’s an easier tale to spin than how she ran into Barney last night. Her mother hadn’t believed her, but that hadn’t stopped Barney from being subjected to a torturous hour of decaf coffee and apple pie. He bore it well and when he hugged her goodnight, he whispered it was at least a break from looking at pictures of slaughtered teenage girls. You took relief where you could get it in this line of work. Even if it’s your brother’s mother-in-law trying to set you up with her friend’s daughter.

When she’s released from SHIELD, she heads back to New York. She spins some more tales—to her mother for wanting to leave, to the head of the base for wanting to go home immediately after this tragic event—and it takes a few hours but she is home by midnight, aching and tired. They shot her full of morphine before Fury would get a car to take her home and demanded she rest.

She spends a few days in physical therapy and even more sleeping for hours on end, her body too exhausted to try anything else. She eats only oatmeal and canned soup, and some days she forgets to shower. But she doesn’t forget to hurt, and she’s pretty sure half the reason she doesn’t want to get up in that she knows she’ll have to face the fact her husband isn’t there. 

Fury leaves her a message. She wakes up at two in the afternoon and listens to it, recorded hours ago. “Wanna know what they did to Arachne?” is all the message says, and it feels faintly ominous until she realizes he probably means he needs her in the lab. She doesn’t want to go to the lab, doesn’t want to bother with anything, but eventually she will have to ease back into work. Besides, she really wants to know.

She showers for the first time in three days and yanks a brush through her hair. The swelling in her face is long gone, at least, and she can perch glasses on her nose without it feeling too tender. She dresses in the loosest slacks she owns, finishes the cold soup she tried to eat earlier, and shows up in Fury’s office promptly at five. 

“I figured I’d be seeing you,” he says. “You skipped physical therapy yesterday.”

“I did it at home. I know the moves.”

“Jessica Drew hasn’t eaten in two weeks.”

Bobbi waits for more. It takes a few minutes; he’s rifling through paperwork. It’s look like more of the child-poison case. Finally, he looks up and adds, “Barton found her father. They had a tearful reunion. Then he went into cardiac arrest. They couldn’t revive him. She blames herself, and surprisingly, she’s still functioning. They can get samples out of her, if you want to look into it.”

“Is she awake?”

“Completely functional. I’m told her body is performing regularly even if all she’s had in the water Barton practically forced down her throat three days ago. She’s too upset to object to being a pincushion.”

“Can I see her first?” Ethics mean very little in this line of work, but Bobbi still feels as though she ought to give it a shot.

“Sure. She won’t let Barton leave her side for long though.”

Bobbi muses on the fact that Clint has managed to attract the attention of another pretty, damaged woman as she walks down to the cells. She locates Jessica’s and knocks on the door. Clint opens it. His face is blank, and she wonders if it’s her presence or if simply the fact that he’s stuck in a ten by ten cell with a dead-eyed would-be assassin.

He lets her in as if he expects her. “I saw your brother in Georgia, by the way,” she tells him. “My mother tried to set him up.”

A ghost of a smile flits across Clint’s face. “Let me guess. Sheila’s daughter Mary-Anne.”

“Bingo.”

“Does anyone wanna tell Adaline and Sheila that Mary-Anne is hideous inside and out?”

“Be nice.”

“I was very nice. I didn’t poison her martini.”

She’d tried to kiss Clint once, Bobbi remembers. Mary-Anne had always been bitter. She and Bobbi were the same age, but they were polar opposites. Mary-Anne was an awful student who never grew into her body or face, and her spoiled brat attitude hadn’t helped. She was twice divorced, cheated on both times, and she had turned bitter. After her first divorce, shortly after Bobbi and Clint got married, Adaline held a party and Mary-Anne had gotten Clint to dance. Then she kissed him, or tried to at least. Mary-Anne could be wily, but she didn’t have anything on a highly trained assassin. He’d managed to dodge the kiss without making it look deliberate. Bobbi’s suddenly glad she didn’t tell her parents anything. It would get back to Mary-Anne—everything about Bobbi always did—and she would probably show up in New York and try to get Clint out of spite. She wouldn’t, but if she irritates Clint enough, he might just kill her. It’s not like Mary-Anne is innocent enough to stop him. 

“She won’t eat,” Clint says after a pause. He gestures to Jessica lying unmoving on the cot. “I got her to walk around for a little while earlier but that was all she could handle.”

“Fury said the doctors said she was functioning well.” Bobbi lays her fingers over Jessica’s limp wrist and finds a steady normal beat.

“Biologically, maybe. Emotionally, not so much.” 

Bobbi eyes her husband as he slides against the wall. He looks about as terrible as she feels although she doesn’t think he’s injured. Physically at least. He’s never not been emotionally wounded. He looks pale though, and she knows him well enough to know he won’t have abandoned Jessica while she was so upset. Chances are he’s been in this cell with her most of the time. “Help me get her up,” Bobbi decides. “Let’s see if we can get her to walk.”

Clint silently straightens. Together they manage to get Jessica standing. Like a marionette, she lets them pull her forward, out of the cell, out of the elevator, and finally out to the wide open field surrounding the base. Bobbi loops her arm around Jessica’s waist and keeps her steady. 

Her attention flickers to Clint unbidden. He’s strolling along beside them, his hand close enough to Jessica to catch her quickly if she falls. She finds herself studying him for some sort of sign—that he’s okay, that he’s changed, that he misses her. It’s selfish. She’s the one who left. And she doesn’t regret it much but some cruel part of her wants her mere presence to be enough to throw him off kilter. As if he hasn’t lived a life full of being thrown off kilter. He has no expectations about how things are going to go. He just does and whatever happens, he’ll deal with. Her presence here isn’t doing anything to him, and he might have expected her. 

They walk for nearly an hour, tracing a half-circle around the tarmac and garage and back again. When Jessica starts to look a little healthier, the heat bringing a flush to her cheeks, they take her back inside, to the cafeteria. Docilely, she takes the little bites of apple strudel Clint hands her and eats them, almost as if she’s unaware of what she’s doing. Bobbi watches and wonders. She only knows bits and pieces of Jessica’s story. Clint meets her eye across the table and he seems to understand what she’s thinking of. He ducks his head and turns back to Jessica.

He’ll tell her later, then.

–

Jessica goes to sleep as soon as medical finishes with her. Clint can’t help feeling relieved. He is tired of staying in a cell not much bigger than the studio he is living in, and he is tired of dealing with a grieving girl. He’s tired because he’s the only one who will stay with her; this job doesn’t breed compassion. Clint tries to not to lose his. Sometimes it feels like he’s fighting a battle he’s already lost. 

Bobbi is waiting, and it should feel familiar. She wears the same clean-lined black glasses she bought ten years ago and has never replaced, insisting the frames are strong enough and all she needs to do is replace the lenses every couple of years. She wears the same beige trousers she always wears—she only buys them in them in three colors—and every inch of her face is comfortably familiar. But the way her hands are folded neatly in front of her, a clear indication she didn’t want to be touched, was as bizarre as anything he’d ever seen. There was never a time she didn’t want to be touched by him.

He tells her about Jessica as they walk through the halls. When they reach her lab office, he’s exhausted everything he can say for certain. 

“And she’s consenting to testing?”

Clint says yes. They both know it wouldn’t matter if Jessica said no.

Bobbi lingers with her hand on the door. He knows the expression on her face, polite but distant, a clear indication she’s done with the conversation. Another abnormal action. Without knowing what to do, he inclines his head in acknowledgment and walks on.

He finds Natasha in the halls without meaning to, and she latches onto his arm with enthusiastic desperation. “Please tell me you know a good Indian place.”

He thinks he should be pleased her new relationship is going so well, but bitterness wells up in his throat. Before he can say something he’ll regret, he reminds himself her past is worse than his. “I know some great Indian recipes,” he tells her instead.

“I’m not trying to _poison_ her. Unless you want to cook and I’ll pretend I did?”

“Lies. A great way to start a healthy relationship.”

He doesn’t mean to sound so sharp.

Natasha starts to say something, something he’s pretty sure would be along the lines of, “what do you know about healthy relationships?” but she visibly swallows the words back. “I take it you don’t know one,” she says.

“It’s never been my favorite cuisine. I’m sure I’m won’t know anywhere Laila doesn’t if she likes.” Natasha looks disappointed. He’s seen that look on too many people’s faces in his lifetime and it is always aimed at him. He ought to be used to his best never being enough but he isn’t. “I’ll offer to cook, if you want. But I don’t think Laila cares much. It’s a stupid thing to worry about when you’re dating someone.”

“We’re not dating,” Natasha says automatically. Then she flushes. “I mean—I don’t think—”

Sometimes she skips the lunch to hang out with him, and sometimes they join Maria for a late, quick lunch that’s always more or less boiled eggs, fruit, and maybe a slice of bread if Maria has enough time. But most of the time, he can find Natasha in Laila’s office at lunch and he knows they’ve gone to dinner ten days out of the last fourteen. “You’re dating,” he tells her.

“We’re not—we’re getting to know each other.”

“While kissing and being in a romantic relationship. Last I checked that was dating.  
She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t asking you. Do you have time to look at some recipes?”

He glances at the elevator and spares a thought for Jessica. Dr. Anderson told him he didn’t spend enough time on himself. Everyone had been trying to get him out of Jessica’s cell for days, but short of a direct order from Fury—an order he wouldn’t give without good reason—he wouldn’t leave. He’s sick of staying in there, trying to coax a woman who’s decades older than him into functioning again. This isn’t his job and he doesn’t want to be, doesn’t have any idea what compels to go there every day. He can barely take care of himself some days. Lately it’s been an exercise just to get out of bed in the morning or eat something or get dressed. He doesn’t want to go back and sit in a silent cell with too much time to think and not enough answers. He’s not on duty today, so he says yes and they take the subway.

His studio is small and cluttered, dishes piled up in the sink, dirty clothes strewn on the floor, pizza boxes stacked up on the counter. He keeps meaning to do something about it but dredging up the energy is about as difficult as making a nice puff pastry from scratch. Speaking of, his last attempt at midnight baking is molding in the fridge. He winces and ignores the disdain on Natasha’s face as she moves a tomato sauce stained blanket off the couch to sit. “Do you need some help?” she asks, her voice mostly even though her face is twisted with digust. “You can’t let your… place go just because Jessica is hurting.”

Yourself, she’d almost said. You can’t let yourself go. He wants to argue but he can’t. The truth is he either doesn’t sleep or he sleeps too long. He’ll jerk awake from nightmares or he’ll remember somewhere in his subconscious that Jessica needs him. It’ll be four in the morning when he hadn’t gone to bed until one, and he’ll lay in bed and wait for his heart to stop racing. He’ll be tangled in cheap jersey sheets that pill every time you wash them and there will be nothing to soothe him. It’s the sort of life he’d lived at seventeen, in abandoned places with stolen goods and nothing to make him want to live another day other than sheer stubbornness. Just because his father would have thought him weak for giving up. Just because Buck and Jacques wanted him dead. He’d done a lot to spite all of them, even if they’d never know. 

He’d done a lot to spite himself too. But he’s only just figuring out that now.

–

Natasha chooses her recipes from a Hindu cookbook quickly and leaves again. He can’t blame her; the studio is five hundred square feet and filled to the brim with junk. He takes a good look at it and finds he really doesn’t want to spend another night in it like this. He rifles through his cabinets before he remembers he has no trash bags here. This places has always been meant to be a safe house, and he hasn’t used it in so long he’d almost forgotten the alarm code. 

He drives to the nearest Target. By the time he gets there he’s convinced himself he needs new clothes, although he thinks that’s only because he’s too lazy to drag the laundry down six flights of stairs to the basement. By the time he leaves, his car is packed full of too many things but he has new sheets and trash bags and a slightly better outlook on life that fades as he works his way through traffic. 

By midnight, he’s cleaned the cupboards, gotten rid of cans of soup and crushed tomatoes that are five years expired and replaced them with brand new cans. He’s tossed too-old pasta out of the pantry, and he’s gotten rid off the cracked plastic cups that have been in here forever. The floor is freshly mopped, and the dishes are all done—the new ones; he threw the old ones away—and he’s gone through his clothes and thrown out the oldest, most threadbare items—which are most of them, since he doesn’t buy new clothes very often. The trash is taken out, and there is a fresh pot of chicken curry soup in the fridge. 

It feels nice to do something again, his muscles well-used from walking five flights of stairs up and down eight times, his mind almost as clear as the apartment, the smells of a clean-scented dish soap and a vanilla candle permeating the air. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to make him tired enough to sleep.

Waking up is not any easier. He keeps his wedding ring in a resin box with a dragonfly on it on his nightstand. He has to move it, he thinks when he wakes up. It’s probably not healthy to keep the ring in front of his face. It makes the morning seem bleaker than usual. He forces himself to stand up and pick up the box. He shoves it in the pocket of a suit jacket he hasn’t worn in a decade but still has for some reason. In the back of his closet, he won’t be tempted to wonder.

Going through the motions of the morning is easy. He bought a new coffeepot, one that actually works without having to be smacked a couple times and new coffee that didn’t taste stale. He has stuff for breakfast now although all he can manage is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But he hasn’t eaten real food in days, focused too much on Jessica and the tumbling, unhappy thoughts in his head so eating something other than potato chips and Hostess cupcakes feels good. 

He goes to work but he doesn’t go to see Jessica immediately. He also doesn’t walk by Bobbi’s office the way he usually does—although he really only does that at night when there aren’t enough people around in the labs to look at him pityingly. He instead goes to the gym and spars with a newbie eager to show off what he’s learned. Clint is still better than him. But it’s been so long since he’s worked with trainees and he used to like it. It’s nice to discover he still does.

He’s not on call but he hangs around, first to harass Natasha over her dreamy look as she comes down from HR, second to harass Fury to _actually_ put him back to work and then to give Maria another cup of coffee and check in on her. She’s doing better and seems to be thriving with the grueling, long hours of being second in command. McKay is not back to work yet, having been struck down by a heart attack. He’s alright and recovering but the doctors all agreed he needed a break from the stress. So Fury kept Maria in his place, and she’s young enough to handle a few weeks’ worth of stress.

Eventually he makes his way to Jessica. They have already told him she wanted to see him although he’s not sure how they know; she spoke maybe ten words in the last week. He’s also not sure what’s reassuring about him. He assumed she would be mad at him, hate him for finding her father, for imprisoning her, for just being there to be mad at. But she’s clinging onto him and his sympathy is reaching its limits. Walking away would be hell on his conscience though, so he drags himself down to the cells. Jessica looks up at him with wide eyes like she’s surprised he came after. Guiltily, he slides down to the floor with his back to the wall, facing her, and resigns himself to another day of this.

–

Natasha eyes the pot with distaste. She was so sure she could cook a soup that only required three ingredients if you didn’t include salt and pepper. She was wrong. The soup congealed. How she’s not sure. She throws it in the sink and storms down to the cells, finding her old one with an ease that disconcerts her.

Jessica Drew doesn’t even flinch when Natasha throws the door open. It’s the entire opposite reaction of the guards who flinched the moment she appeared and hadn’t even questioned what she was doing down there. “I need you to teach me to cook,” she tells Clint when she spots him in the corner flipping through a Harlequin Blaze book with a look of sheer boredom on his face. 

“I already said I would.”

“I can’t even make tomato soup.”

“Did you try?”

“It congealed.”

Finally he looks up. “How?”

“That’s not the point!”

He stares at her for a beat then laughs. “You’re trying to impress Laila.”

“All I had to do was melt some butter, quarter some onions, dump in a can of tomatoes and let it cook,” she grumbles instead of giving him the satisfaction of telling him he’s right. “It should have been fine.”

“You probably didn’t have enough liquid. Since when are you the domestic type anyway?”

“Being able to cook is a life skill.”

He stares at her for an uncomfortable beat. It _is_ a life skill, she wants to say, but that’s not her point. “So what’s really up?” he asks.

She sinks to the floor next to him and stares at Jessica instead of answering. She has creamy white skin and a small spattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, but without red lipstick and a tasteful hairstyle, the other woman looks even younger than Natasha. “She could use a haircut,” she comments. “Maybe that’ll cheer her up.” Clint’s gaze shifts to her; without looking, she knows the look is derisive and unimpressed. Flippancy is unnecessary with him but more than that it’s useless. He knows all her tricks. “My memories resurface sometimes. I thought quiet domesticity was nice once.”

She thinks of James and sneaking around the Red Room’s base with him. It was easy in the beginning—it was hardly like anyone stopped them from having sex, and James was on loan to them and technically theirs for the time being. It was harder when it wasn’t just sex, or when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other in non-sexual ways. A stroke of the cheek, a lingering hand on the arm, those could be dangerous. And they’d often been a half second way from being caught. And eventually that luck had run out. But she still remembers the dreams they talked about—a nice little house somewhere warm but not too sunny where they could live off the land and make alcohol in their cellar and just be alone without the demands of handlers and scientists and the rest of the world, where no one knew them for the blood on their hands. It’s a nice dream but Natasha will admit these days quiet domesticity is overrated, and she thinks if they’d managed their escape, they would have killed each other in a few months’ time. But it was nice to think about it sometimes, nice to escape to the idea of another life you could have had.

“Come over whenever,” Clint says expressionlessly. “I’ll give my rusty teaching skills a shine.”

“I’m free tonight.”

“Not seeing Laila?”

“Her parents are in town. I wasn’t all that big on meeting them.” 

He hums—in agreement or just acknowledgment, she’s not entirely sure. “I hear Bobbi’s parents are less than ideal in-laws.”

“They’re less than ideal parents.”

“I don’t remember mine.”

“I wish I didn’t remember mine.”

“What do you remember?” she asks curiously. “Just your father’s temper?”

“That’s the only memory I can rely on.”

“What are Bobbi’s parents like?”

“Selfish and petty.”

They sit in comfortable silence for several minutes. “Is this all you do down here? Stare at the wall?”

“Occasionally I read.” He holds up the romance novel again. It has a picture of a woman in a Santa-inspired lingerie set, and the spine looks like it’s never been cracked.

“I see you’re loving it,” she says sarcastically.

“I haven’t started this one yet. But it passes the time. It’s not like I have much else to do.”

“You’re too nice. And she’s taking advantage of it.”

“So have you.”

Natasha thinks it might be petty to say, “Yes, but I’m the only one who’s allowed to,” so she keeps her mouth shut. “But you knew me. What’s your excuse for her?”

“She doesn’t have anyone else.” He looks at her. “Neither did you.”

“I don’t want your sympathy.”

“You always say that.”

“You don’t think I mean it?”

“Do you?”

She thinks of Padang and a mission gone wrong. She thinks of pressing a hand to her heaving stomach and willing herself not to throw up at something as trivial as memories she didn’t know she remembered. She remembers the bullets flying overhead and how she couldn’t move, still caught in the memory of a face she didn’t know how she knew. She heard the woosh of an arrow fly past her and neatly implant itself in her target’s throat. She hadn’t seen him coming. She hadn’t heard him. And she hadn’t seen or heard Hawkeye behind her either, even though the heavy tread of his boots should have given him away. But then he was a capable acrobat, surprisingly light on his feet in the heaviest boots. He picked her up and she offered no resistance, still trying to calm her churning stomach, and he forced her into a run. They ran as far as the Masjid Muhammadan, sticky from sweat and the humidity and a spray of blood dotting the floral pattern of her dress, and finally collapsed in the relative safety of an alley.

She remembers resenting the save, but more than that, she remembers curling against his chest, refusing to cry but unable to stop shaking, telling herself that she was just keeping up the appearance of lovers caught in the rain. But no one was there to lie to, and when he finally, hesitantly wrapped his arms around her, she was grateful for the sympathy. More than anything, more than her desire to snap at him for his pity, she was grateful. 

She doesn’t tell him this, then or now. She has never needed to.

–

Her cooking lessons had gone decently yesterday. She’d made a pot of carrot ginger soup and Clint had walked her through pan frying some maple salmon filets four of five times before she didn’t burn them. She puts together a salad a half hour before Laila is due and wishes she had better dishes. Domesticity is surprisingly expensive. Durable matching dinnerware and silverware isn’t cheap, and she finally got new curtains in a whale pattern she thinks is meant for children but she never had anything like it before. Then there’s the new, unscratched pots and pans, the various cooking-related things likes measuring cups, and her brand new tea kettles, both electric and stove. Of course, she didn’t _need_ them—and as Clint pointed out, she was unlikely to use anything other than her tea kettles—but it was nice to have things and feel like she was in a place for a semi-permanent time. And if she was going to move, she could take all this with her. 

It makes her wonder about getting an actual apartment and not staying in one of the matchbox suites on base. She mentions it to Laila when she arrives, bearing two bottles of wine, fattoush salad, and a box of homemade kanafeh, her grandmother’s recipe. Laila only says, “If you can afford it, sure.”

_If you can afford it_ means _if you can find a place that’s within the acceptable terms for SHIELD employee off-base apartments_ because they’re very picky about that. Acceptable apartments are rarely ever rent-controlled, so even if you were lucky enough to find one you probably wouldn’t have it approved. It’s ridiculously controlling, in her opinion, but it’s not as bad as the Red Room, so she never really complains. But it makes her pause and think better of spending her off-duty time tomorrow looking at apartment complexes. Natasha could afford one but she expects spending a hundred thousand a month on an apartment is unnecessary. She could, she supposes, find a house in the suburbs like Bobbi and Clint, far enough away from the bustle of the city but close enough to the base. But rattling around a house all on her own is a depressing thought. Not to mention, she’s not even sure Fury will let her go that far where they can’t keep a constant watch on her. “Doesn’t it bother you that I’m the Black Widow?” Natasha says Laila as she pours out wine. “Doesn’t it bother you that I kill people?”

“Only bad people,” Laila says cheerfully.

“Not always. Not before.”

Laila plays with the stem of her wineglass with a hint of nervousness. “I don’t know what you being the Black Widow entails.”

“Not much, these days.” Natasha pushes the memories of a burning hospital aside with the mantra of _it wasn’t you it wasn’t you it wasn’t you_. As if that makes it any better. As if that washes the blood off her hands. “It’s the burden of the past, I guess.”

Laila’s square nails tap against the table as Natasha plates up the food. “You know, I have a story similar to your partner’s.”

“What, you joined a circus too?”

Laila laughs, and Natasha is relieved to see her tense face ease. “No! But my father was a violent drunk. He beat my mother to death. I guess I was lucky enough not to be there. He killed himself when he sobered up and realized what he did. I was luckier than Agent Barton—my sister and I ended up being taken in by a nice family.”

Proper polite conversation has always failed Natasha when there wasn’t an objective in sight. Did she ask questions? Offer sympathy? Ask her about her sister, who she’s never mentioned before? Helplessly, she makes a little gesture with her hands, feeling very abnormal. But Laila is used to dealing with emotionally stunted intelligence agents, and so as she cuts into the fish, she continues. “They’re Lebanese too, like my mother was. They taught us Arabic, which my mother never did, and they helped us bake out of our grandmother’s cookbook—it was all we had left of her. She died before I was born. To be honest, it was all we had left of our mother too—everything was taken to pay off bills.”

“So it was happy.”

“It was. It _is_ very happy. They had us see a therapist right from the start, so I never did too badly. My parents come up to the city every other month—they retired to Florida for some reason. I would have chosen Malibu but it wasn’t up to me.”

“I wouldn’t have chosen a beach at all.”

“Retiring to Alaska?”

“Maybe Finland. I didn’t see much last time I was there.” _It was to kill someone,_ she thinks. _Blood is so stark against snow. It’s the first time I was afraid of it._ But this is not a conversation for a human resources representative, so Natasha says instead, “But in the summer the light lasts forever. I never liked that.”

“I can’t say I know much about Scandinavia—which makes me a bad sister, I think. Eman works in Sweden for some pharmaceutical company. I’ve never visited. Winter here is hard enough for me. I grew up in Arizona.”

“See, I couldn’t handle the heat.” Natasha looks down at her hands. Compared to Laila’s olive skin she looks colorless. “I don’t tan even a little. You think all the things they did to me, I wouldn’t be able to sunburn. But I turn as red as my hair in the sun.”

“Isn’t that what sunscreen is for?”

“It’s difficult to find time to do it on a mission. Most of the time I get around to it once then completely forget even if I have time.”

Laila hums around a mouthful of food and swallows. “This is pretty good.”

“Tell me that tomorrow if you don’t get food poisoning.”

“I see you have a lot of faith in your cooking skills.”

“The soup was made under Clint’s watchful eye. He taught me how to cook the salmon but I burned the first four batches and barely managed the fifth so I was kind of worried about today’s.” It is charred a little. She’d put it on her new grill pan just for the sake of aesthetically pleasing grill marks because food always tastes better when it’s nice-looking. But instead of being burnt it just tasted smoky and it wasn’t bad.

“I think it’s good,” Laila says again, and Natasha can’t help her smile.

–

Bobbi is forcibly dragged out of her lab by her physical therapist, a no-nonsense woman named Martina with a strong Southern accent. After two hours with her, Bobbi’s tongue is tripping over her painstakingly learned no-discernible-accent words. Luckily she can lock herself back in the lab with only Annabelle to hear her until she regains control. 

But after three days in the lab, she hasn’t the slightest idea what Jessica had been injected with. She can confirm Clint’s assumption that Jessica’s DNA is human but altered, and she can pick out the spider DNA in her but other than that, Bobbi is at a loss. She can’t isolate anything. She reminds herself it’s early and goes to report the initial findings to Fury, who responds, “Were we expecting her to have spider DNA?”

“She seemed convinced, according to Agent Barton.”

Fury’s lips quirk. Bobbi usually only calls Clint by his title during investigations where they’re interacting with other law enforcement agencies. Most of these people have no idea they’re married. Bobbi doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but the truth is the distance is reassuring. Fury thankfully chooses not to comment. “Then table it for now, Morse. Martina gave you a tentative clear. I’m going to need you out in the field.” There’s a brief pause. “You’ll be out with _Agent Barton_ and Romanoff. They’re gonna need a third, and I need Hill here.”

Bobbi understands the tacit question but doesn’t trust her hesitant agreement to come out of her mouth. Pressing her mouth together, she nods.

“We have new locations in South America to check. Briefing at five with Hill. You have until then to submit your initial findings.”

“Will Jessica be alright?”

Fury rolls his eye. “She’s a trained assassin. I think she’ll be fine without Barton for a couple of weeks. If not, I’ll just shoot her.”

Bobbi has no idea if he’s joking or not, so she heads towards the door while pointing out her report will be very short. And it is. She barely clears five paragraphs. This isn’t a paper; she has no need to explain the background. She’s done by four, and she manages a quick lunch of fruit salad and roasted vegetables before heading to the briefing.

Hill appears to have settled into McKay’s office. Natasha settles into the chair between Clint and Bobbi easily, deliberately not noticing the way Bobbi tenses when Clint briefly meets her eye. 

“This isn’t going to be pretty and it will require some finesse,” Hill starts without inflection. “There are rumors connecting the child deaths to a charity who ‘take in’ children in South America. According to official records, they take in children whose parents cannot feed another mouth, who are orphaned, or who are found working dangerous jobs are taken into this orphanage and found new homes or given training to find good jobs.”

“Sounds like the Victorian idea of an orphanage,” Natasha comments idly.

Ignoring this, Hill continues, “No one can prove these children are given either of these things but it’s supported by several influential politicians.” She proceeds to name them all. Most of them are American or Australian. “Barton and Romanoff will pose as prospective parents—they are known to have couples come in and find something wrong with them. Dr. Morse, you’ll have be the eagle eye. SHIELD luckily owns a building a block from the main orphanage, and you’re cleared to be on the roof. It’s officially a restaurant. The rooftop dining is used for special people.”

Not Bobbi’s favorite thing to be but at least she wouldn’t be crouching on a rooftop trying to hide.

Hill runs through the more minor details, but it’s the type of mission they’ve all worked a dozen times before, and she knows it so soon enough the briefing is done and they go their separate ways. Bobbi regretfully locks her lab office up and heads to the training room. She hadn’t picked up her batons in weeks.

“You’re looking stiff,” Melinda tells her.

“Do you ever take your pilot suit off?”

“I’m flying you out tonight.”

Bobbi stops the training program. She hasn’t used it in years and it makes her feel like a newbie again. Her usual sparring partner for after an injury was Clint. She could go to him, she supposes, but that seems like weakness, and she wants some distance. “Is there any point?”

“In flying you out? Well, you’re not going to walk to Brazil. Not by tomorrow afternoon.”

“I mean in not being with Clint. I see him all the time. I _think_ about him all the time.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s always around. He could go back to LA. If you asked him to, he would. And that’s my final advice. We have therapists for a reason.”

“And you avoid relationships for a reason, right?”

“Look at Romanoff. She’s the most dangerous person in existence and she’s walking around like a love-struck little schoolgirl.”

“I can’t imagine you doing the same. And give Natasha a break. It’s her first non-violent relationship. Laila is normal.”

“Laila has lime green hair.”

“Only the tips. And you sound like my mother.”

“I was going to help you with your form but now I think I’ll leave.”

“That’s fine. It didn’t sound like anyone expected me to be anything more than the eyes and ears.”

Melinda looks her over. Bobbi doesn’t want to know what she sees, but she suspects she looks like a mess. She hadn’t washed her hair in three days and she hadn’t bothered with makeup. And she certainly wasn’t doing too well with the program; she’s pretty sure she has a bruise forming on her thigh, not that Mel could see it. But she might be able to see the way Bobbi’s holding herself. “They shouldn’t send you out.”

“They expect something bad to happen. I’ll be on the outside looking in and the other two will be on the ground.”

“And _I’ll_ be waiting doing nothing.”

She resumes the program. “Even Fury won’t stop you if you wanted to tag along. We could pretend to drink our way through a few pitchers of margaritas. I’m told they’re amazing. Hibiscus lime.”

Mel frowns at her. “You’re being flippant. If you’re that off kilter ‘cause of Barton, let Fury know.”

“I already said I could do it.” She knocks a life model decoy down and barely dodges a second one. “Plus I really want to know what hibiscus lime margaritas taste like.”

“Like regular margaritas with hibiscus in them. I’m not a fan. It stains my teeth.”

“Now who’s being flippant?”

Melinda stops the program altogether. “You’re in pain, and you’re not going to be useful tomorrow. Go relax. Take a hot bath. And don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like chase down a moving car?” Bobbi almost winces. Flippancy is not like her, and Mel’s not happy to hear it. It means she’s doing badly. She hasn’t done badly in years.

“Like call Barton.”

–

“They look good together,” Bobbi comments idly.

“Don’t be jealous,” Mel says, wincing her way through a sip of the margarita. “It doesn’t suit you, and you left remember?”

“I’m not jealous.” Not much at least. It’s just that Natasha and Clint look picture perfect walking down the street.

“You are. God, why is everyone having relationship drama all at the same time? You know Georgiana’s boyfriend cheated on her? With Lilith. And Lilith dumped her boyfriend for him, and Amanda’s boyfriend realized he way gay—at least that’s not anyone’s fault—and Hayley cheated on her girlfriend because she thought her girlfriend cheated first. She didn’t,” Melinda adds.

“Natasha’s relationship is fine.”

“It’s doomed. HR rep and spy? Not a pretty mix. Laila was disappointed to have this weekend’s plans derailed. It’ll go from mosquito bite irritating to poison ivy rash in sensitive spots irritating in a heartbeat.”

“That… was certainly a description. Well, fine, what do you want to talk about? Since you already turned down the latest plane model, science journal, and whatever martial art you’re learning now.”

Mel shrugs. She’s wearing a floral dress, watercolor blue with bright green and pink flowers, and it looks wrong on her somehow and not only because it’s winter in Brazil. Although it’s not exceedingly cold and she’s compensated with woolen tights and a jacket, it still looks wrong. Bobbi decided on jeans and a sweater herself, plain and uninteresting among the few tourists in the surrounding hotels. “Let’s talk about Jessica. I’m nosy.”

“She apparently threw a fit last night when Clint left. I haven’t let him know yet. He’ll feel guilty and for what? Fury’s tempted to leave her alone for several days and see how she likes that.”

“Unnecessarily cruel.” Mel knocks back her margarita. It’s not even alcoholic since they’re working. “He won’t do it. No, but I guess I’m wondering if they’ll let her go soon. She’s not really a threat, is she? She’s been alone with Fury enough times to kill him if she really wanted to.”

“She’s also not entirely mentally stable right now. She just had the rug pulled out from under her. What’s going on?” 

They’re sitting on the same side of the table to see the orphanage door. Their unnecessary sunglasses have built in binoculars but Bobbi has a less obstructed view of the door. Mel leans over, using stealing a piece of fruit from Bobbi’s plate as an excuse, and frowns. “The door isn’t opening. They’re knocking. I’m guessing Widow’s picking the lock. She’s being hidden by Hawkeye.”

The second Clint and Natasha enter the orphanage Bobbi knows something is wrong. Even before her comm crackles and Natasha says, “Down here. Now.”

They take the back entrance shown to them by someone in the restaurant before they were seated. They also use the back entrance of the orphanage. Bobbi walks in with her gun drawn and immediately wants to retch. Melinda stumbles back at the smell. Dead bodies, and lots of them, sitting out for days. 

“Mockingbird, look.”

Bobbi approaches the nearest room with trepidation. The floor is covered in congealed blood and bodily fluids coming from the ten children stuffed into the room. They’re two to a bed, their eyes propped open, lips cyanide blue, mouths propped into a smile, throats slit open, although not bleeding much considering they were probably dead first. But the true horror is the fact that they are all missing their hands and feet, which are neatly laid out in the corner. All the blood is coming from them. And decay has set in.

Bobbi gags and rushes out in the hall before she throws up. Clint and Natasha meet her in the hallway. Clint looks about as sick as she feels. Natasha looks merely bored, as if this is a normal day for her. “Gruesome,” she says conversationally. “Can you three throw up in the back alley while I make the call?”

Melinda doesn’t throw up but barely. Bobbi and Clint do. When Bobbi manages to stand again, she takes the plastic cup of water Melinda hands her. “Widow’s cell service isn’t working so I went back to the restaurant.” She hands another cup to Clint. “Widow will stay. You two go back to the restaurant when you can stand.” Mel glances over at Natasha, standing at the back entrance. Reluctantly, she adds, “I’ll stay with Widow.”

Bobbi manages to stumble in the direction of the restaurant. The waiter, a former agent she vaguely remembers that she thinks retired during her second month at the agency, hands them cups of light broth and a plate of plain toast and lingers until they’re no longer looking gray and green.

“Cyanide,” Bobbi says as she becomes aware of Clint’s thigh pressing against hers—they’re on a loveseat on the side of one of the smaller rooms inside the restaurant, one that’s clearly meant to be romantic judging by the way it’s filled with couples’ tables and the artwork. The table in front of them is small, requiring them to be in each other’s space. Even if they weren’t separated, Bobbi wouldn’t find much romantic about elbowing each other while trying to eat. “It looked like cyanide. I read the reports on the plane. They didn’t find anything similar to it or anything that worked like it.”

There’s a brief pause before Clint lifts his head out of his hands. “Except we don’t know what’s in the poison,” he points out. “I didn’t see any of the other victims. I assume there was no sign of cyanide or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No blue lips at least. If I’m going on instinct only, I’d say this is something else.”

“And they knew we were coming. Widow and I saw no one going in but the office looked like it’d been cleared fast.”

Her comm crackles. “You two get back over here.” The voice is distorted, and Bobbi hopes it’s just a bad connection and not something going on over there. 

Clint glances over at her. It takes her a moment to realize he didn’t hear it. She signs an explanation at him and pulls out her gun. She doesn’t think she’ll be too good with her batons right now; her entire left side is aching from how she leaned over to vomit.

Clint follows suit and lets her lead the way back towards the orphanage. They find Melinda and Natasha is the office. Luckily there is nothing wrong, unless one counts the desk drawer filled with the sort of devices that intercept communications. “They know about the restaurant, I guess?” Melinda says.

“Or they just overheard the right thing,” Natasha says.

“I’m not a forensic pathologist but I’d think these bodies were laying out for days,” Bobbi says. “The call to the restaurant was made less than thirty six hours ago. It’s not hot outside but it isn’t cool enough to stop decay either, so I would have to assume they broke down at a typical rate for nearly room temperature. I don’t remember all the details on how bodies break down but the amount of decay seems to suggest at least three days.”

“You’re right. And some of the bodies at the front of the orphanage look like they’ve been there for even longer,” Clint says. “My understanding was the information had just gotten in when Fury gave it you. If that’s true, they were already in the process of killing them.”

“What did they do?” Melinda asks, trying for levity and coming off shaky. “A room a day?”

“Actually…” Natasha starts. She turns to Mel and winces. “They may have done that. Now that you mention it, something seems familiar. The Dubiki crime family has a long history of mutilating children. The Red Room partnered with them once or twice. Shared interests and all.”

“Mutilating children is a shared interest?” Clint interjects.

Natasha glares. “No. You know that’s not true. The Red Room created us.”

“I don’t know. They kind of did mutilate you.”

Before this can devolve into a childish fight, Bobbi says, “We already assume the Dubiki crime family is involved based on the letters.”

“This is just more proof,” Natasha says. “When I was with the Red Room, there was an… issue. A child had escaped and gone to the authorities for help. They cut body parts off the children, killed them, and set them up for the authorities to find. I wasn’t the girl they recruited to help with that thankfully, but I’m not totally sure of the details other than she was gone for a week or so and said they went room by room. The really pretty or talented were all the way at the end, so they would get terrified. I think the hope was that they would be easier to control, but they ended up dead too.”

Before Natasha can expound on why they wanted them alive—although Bobbi is unfortunately sure of the answer—a group of uniforms file into the office. Bobbi gratefully leaves.

–

When dusk hits, Clint leaves the safe house. Natasha doesn’t argue, even though she watches him disapprovingly from the other bed in the room. He knows she’s right, but he’s the idiot who brought sleeping pills with him and wants to swallow the whole bottle down, so he ignores her look and leaves anyway. The pills are tucked all the way in the bottom of his bag, and if he doesn’t put some distance between them and himself, he’s going to end up taking them as soon as she goes to sleep.

He finds a bar he’s been to before and orders the strongest drink he can handle. It’s made differently this time, the grenadine stronger to make it more red. He means to sip at it, to sit in this bar until he can control the way he breathes. Right now his breath is rattling around in his chest like he’s sick. It’s all his head, probably. It doesn’t help to know that. Within seconds, he’s finished the first drink, the burn down his throat an old familiar friend. Or at least not an enemy. It should be, he thinks in between the time it takes to get the bartender’s attention and order another. It should be an enemy, it should have been crushed by the memories of his father’s fists. But the memories are distant, and the pain has been dulled by time and age, still there, still acutely stinging but somehow feeling more imagined than anything.

No, not imagined, he argues with himself as he downs the second drink. Just… conceptualized. He knows it happened, knows it hurt, remembers the flashes of hate and fear, but it’s been so long he only knows it in the way he’s built it into his head. 

He downs a third drink and forces himself to stand. There’s a dance floor, and he’s not a dancer, but it doesn’t matter when a tiny brunette wraps himself around him. He has a moment of clarity, the knowledge that this is a bad idea and he really shouldn’t—but his entire life suddenly seems like a string of bad decisions, so really what is this one? 

He dances for a little while, if you can call it dancing, and by that time the alcohol has removed the last of his inhibitions. He has another drink and dances some more with the tiny brunette, who he thinks must have told him her name but he doesn’t even remember if he heard her. He has another drink, and another, and finally he switches to beer but it doesn’t do anything for him so he goes to straight tequila shots, no chaser. By then the burn no longer comes when he downs a drink, and the brunette is cuddled into his side. And somewhere in his drunkenness, he thinks if he’s gonna do this it ought to be now, before he’s too drunk to get hard.

She has a hotel room a few blocks away in the heart of a touristy area. It’s a nice hotel room, he thinks hazily before she wraps her legs around him. Usually he wouldn’t stumble at her sudden slight weight, but he almost slams into the wall. Barely managing to catch themselves, he smiles a little at her giggle and lets go to let her jump down and lead him to the bed.

He wakes up a few hours later, just before dawn according to his watch. The lights in the room are on, and the tiny brunette is fast asleep against. He feels like he’s been run over by a truck, and more than that, he feels like he’s just cheated on his wife. He reminds himself that she doesn’t want him, that she will not care. As stealthily as he can manage, he gets up and dresses and leaves, following the signs downstairs to a side door. 

Natasha finds him two blocks from the bar where he’s sitting on the pavement, lambasting himself in the relative peace of the empty street. She takes one look at him and the scorn on her face changes to as close to worry as she gets. “You smell like beer and Chanel Number Five and you have a hickey. What did you do last night?”

_I made a bad decision. Or twenty._ “I did what I’m good at,” he manages to say although his throat feels like it’s on fire when he talks, and his head is starting to throb. He’s starving too—he hasn’t eaten since the toast and broth—but the idea of eating is enough to make him stumble to his feet and throw up in an alleyway trashcan. Behind him Natasha sighs, loud and exaggerated so he can hear it.

“Let’s get you back to the safe house. Luckily Bobbi and Mel never noticed you were gone.”

When he’s sure he can stand again without throwing up more, he lets her drag him back to the safe house. She pauses every once in a while, like she’s checking for something, but Clint can’t figure out what. They’re not being followed or Natasha wouldn’t stop in the middle of the street and then restart again, and if she’s stopping to check on him, it’s doing more harm than good.

Inside the safe house, she makes him drink a bottle of water and eat some saltines before shoving him in the shower. When he comes out, somehow he feels even worse. He fumbles for his bag and tries to pull out new clothes, but his fingers brush the bottle and close around it without him meaning to. He freezes and wills himself to let go. But he doesn’t.

“Give me the bottle, Clint,” someone says from the doorway. The voice sounds hazy but familiar. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he laughs at himself. Of course it’s familiar; the only people here are people he’s known for over a decade. But he doesn’t let go of the bottle still. He can’t seem to loosen his fingers around. The maddening urge to swallow down the entire bottle is suffocating, and fighting it is a one way trip to his own personal hell.

He feels a presence closing in on him. Bobbi. She pries his fingers off the bottle and takes it from him. Underneath the rushing of his blood and the hammering of his heart, he’s grateful for the first time that she left.

–

They are suppose to lie low in Chile. Clint doesn’t know what lying low means when they’re breaking into a suspected Dubiki lair with four people conspicuously dressed in rubberized jumpsuits. (“It’s not rubber,” Danielle Harrison from R&D told him once. “It’s not anything you’ve seen before. We created it for SHIELD. It regulates body temperature. It acts as protection against burns and all types of known weapons.” But still, it feels like rubber. And it chafes. Somehow it wasn’t moisture-wicking).

But it’s night, the suits are dark blue, and it’s winter. The added scarves and fuzzy sweaters Bobbi found somewhere help them blend it. The lair is located deep in the Andes and it’s the sort of lair that has a secret entrance you get to by moving a rock. Clint seen that in a cartoon before, but he can’t remember seeing it in real life. It’s not as interesting as in cartoons. They’ve crept along the mountains little by little for hours now, playing tourists with a camera and being deceptively unaware about the people going in and out. This mountain doesn’t seem as popular, but there are plenty of actual tourists to hide their presence. Apparently, people sometimes camp out here for fun. He has no idea why. Even through his gloves, his hands are starting to freeze. His nose froze hours ago and now it’s running like crazy. He unwraps the scarf around his face for the millionth time to blow it, feeling ridiculously miserable. He spent three weeks in the North Pole once, sleeping in the wilderness; the relative warmth of the Andean Mountains should not bother him.

It’s the pills, he thinks. Bobbi had gotten rid of them, and Clint is grateful for the most part to not have their temptation in his hands. But the most part isn’t the loudest part of him. He craves them, needs them, and the desire has his hands shaking and his temper frayed.

_You are not an addict_ , he tells himself. _You are not an addict. You can’t be. You’re just cold and hungry and tired._

Creeping into a hidden lair at nightfall is strange. He has his quiver strapped along his back but he knows he won’t be able to hold a bow straight right now. He won’t do much better with a gun in his hand. He tells himself again he’s not an addict, but it’s far from reassuring. It’s an empty mantra he’s repeating, all while deliberately forgetting the triple dose of pills he took nightly for two weeks before they left. He can’t afford sleeping pills on a mission. Why did he even bring them? Maybe Barney was right and he just loves torturing himself.

He wraps the scarf around his face again and tries to steady his hands. Useless but it gives him something to do. He stays at the back of the line as they file down, and he hopes he’s not unsteady enough to shoot one of them. He’s not convinced, and neither is Natasha judging by the looks she sends him over her shoulder. She insisted on staying close to him as they’re partners but he’s pretty sure she just wants to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid again. He’s too fucking freezing to even want to move and he doesn’t have any alcohol or pills so he’s not sure what she thinks he’ll do but he still thinks he ought to say something to reassure her. Something better than _I can’t be an addict. I refuse to be._

He doesn’t have anything better than that.

Melinda goes first into the lair, disappearing from sight with a smooth slither. Bobbi and Natasha go next. Clint falls with less grace, his legs suddenly going out on him. He winces when he hits the ground with a thump, his entire body jarred by the impact. Natasha, of course, landed with a ballerina’s grace. If Bobbi were uninjured, she would have landed easily too, but she’s rubbing at her thighs, face pale, leaning into Mel’s worried touch.

“We need to move,” Natasha says, voice muffled by the scarf wrapped over her face. “Mockingbird, can you walk?”

“I’m fine.”

Natasha glances at Clint then at his shaking hands. She doesn’t ask. He doesn’t have an answer anyway.

They file out of the room, Natasha first this time. Clint still brings up the rear, not sure he’ll be much use in a fight. They’re going in half-blind, all their intel incomplete. If nothing else, they hope to get a sample of the poison so they can break it down without having to extract it from a child’s blood. The only thing they do know for certain is the schematics. It’s not a large place; it would be too risky to chip away too much of the mountain. Ten people wouldn’t fit inside comfortably, which will make it difficult if they had to fight. But they watched everyone who entered leave again, so he’s hoping no one will be here. It’s just a hidden space for messages that need to be passed, things that need to not be found, or weapons that need to be distributed. There’s no electricity and it feels even colder down here. Thankfully, they see no one so Clint holsters his gun with relief. They double check for hidden compartments and find none. They take pictures of the notes they find, all of which are written in code. They find no poison and no weapons. And then they slip out of the hole the same way they came, one at a time, climbing up the ice-cold ladder, something easier for them than for him. He twists his ankle on the way back up, his knees twinge with every step, and his legs feel like jelly when he finally hits solid land. 

They’re to camp there overnight. Clint bundles himself in more clothes, ignoring the looks he receives and offers to take the first watch. He’s not going to sleep and he’s not so far gone yet that he can’t do it. No one tells him no, so he waits out an hour or two before indulging in kneading his hand into his thigh in an attempt to soothe himself. 

“You know,” Natasha pauses as if she can’t think of the words, “you know you’re a mess.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You’re an addict.”

“I’m not,” he snarls at her. She raises her eyebrows and he drops his head down in embarrassment. “I’m not,” he says more steadily. “I’m just not totally okay right now.”

“You’re an addict,” she repeats harshly. “You’re a mess so you hide behind addiction and don’t deal with your problems. And then you have the audacity to tell me I’m the one with issues. I’m dealing with mine at least, like a functional human being.”

Clint feels a flare of anger and before he can stop himself, he says, “Well, you’re not exactly human are you? You’re a lab experiment brought to life. Worse, you’re a puppet. Someone else is pulling your strings.”

“Not anymore.”

“Are you sure about that?”

–

Clint’s bitterness has a knife-like quality to it. If Natasha were the kind to scare easily, she’d be terrified of it. But tonight, cold and missing Laila and wishing for something she can’t define, she is just angry. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she hisses, careful not to wake up Bobbi and Melinda. “That I’ve been controlled so long I don’t recognize it anymore?”

“No,” he says, suddenly contrite. She wants to grab him and shake him. He never does her the courtesy of staying angry, and she always feels like she has no right to be angry either. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Well then what did you mean?” It comes out angry. She feels guilty but she doesn’t gentle her tone. “You must have meant something,” she adds when he makes no move to talk.

“Can’t you feel it?” he asks. “Even years later, you still feel like someone’s pulling the strings. everything I do, there’s some part of me that feels I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for my father, or Trickshot, or the Swordsman.”

“You’re a mess,” she repeats. But she knows what he means. Their choices were made for survival. It would have been different if they had more options. Options that weren’t bad or worse, atrocious or merely unpleasant. Options that weren’t survive on barest breadcrumbs of dignity or die alone and unwanted and probably in agony.

She’d read a book on the plane about a woman who regretted her choices, and she couldn’t connect with it at all. These choices barely even seemed like choices to Natasha, the stakes so minor she couldn’t believe it was a question. But that was normality for you. The tiniest things could be big if you didn’t know anything else. But choosing between two companies that want you as a communications specialist is a far cry from her own life and it left her with a bitter aftertaste. Who cared when you got a good job either way? Who cared if your boss was a bit of an ass when Natasha’s bosses would just as soon torture their own agents themselves? Who cared if you worked late for six straight weeks when sometimes she wasn’t allowed to sleep? 

So she gets it, really, but, “You’ve been making your own choices for years.”

“Have I?” Clint asks dejectedly, scuffing his boots against the gravel. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“So change it. I’m not letting anyone pull my strings anymore, not even Fury. I chose this, and I’m content here. You don’t even know what you want.”

He glances at Bobbi then looks away. “I can’t have what I want—and no, I don’t mean her,” he adds when she starts to argue. “What I really want, more than anything, is to go back in time and make a million different choices. If I can’t change my dad, well I’m not happy about it, but whatever. I’d stay at the orphanage. I wouldn’t make a big deal if they separated me from Barney. I wouldn’t have joined up with the circus. That’s the crux of it, I guess. I would do anything so the circus wasn’t part of my history.”

“But you can’t change that.”

“No, I can’t.”

“So you’re gonna wallow for the rest of your life?” He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to, not really, because Natasha knows the answer: he’s going to hide behind pills and whiskey and hate himself without end. This isn’t a solution but at least it doesn’t involve self-examination. Clint’s horrible at it, and to be fair, so is she. But introspection isn’t a need for her—there isn’t enough she remembers to contemplate on. She wanted to be free, and she is, and that’s the end of that for her. “I don’t know why I even stayed up with you.”

He’s kneading his thigh again. His hands are shaking again. He glances down at them and looks at her. “We both know why. It’s not necessary. I’m not that far gone.”

“You are,” she says with pity and moves from her sleeping bag to his side finally.

“This isn’t your problem.”

“It is. You’re my partner. If you can’t watch my back, then it’s my problem too. So talk.”

Clint is silent for a long moment. Natasha takes the time to study the snowy mountainside and wonder what it would be like to actually be living their cover story right now. She thinks hiking the Andes with friends sounds good. She wonders if Laila’s into something like that and makes a mental note to ask her. If she isn’t into the hardcore hiking, they could always go to some of the places around New York for that. A four mile trail would be a good exercise, although it’d probably be best to wait until it was cooler. If they were even still together then. Natasha hopes they are. “How soon is too soon in a relationship?” she asks when it’s clear Clint isn’t going to say anything.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? The only relationship I’ve ever been in is with Bobbi. And I don’t think anyone would call it a normal relationship.”

“You can guess. Would it be too soon if I invite her to a different country with me?”

“You’re not kidnapping your girlfriend, are you?”

She shoves him off the rock he’s sitting on. “For a vacation or something. Do you think she’d like hiking? She’s never struck me as an outdoorsy person. She wears five inch heels. But it could be fun.”

“It could be,” he says noncommittally. “But we’re talking a woman whose only forms of exercise are rowing machines and stationary bikes.”

“She takes some dance classes,” Natasha says defensively although what she’s defending Laila against is beyond her. She has some training with weapons and a basic education in martial arts as required for any non-agent at SHIELD, but other than that, Laila lives a normal life with an eight to five job, five days a week, and family. No one expects more from her. 

“Well, take her to tango lessons in Argentina then,” he tells her humorlessly. “Just don’t take her up the goddamned mountains. I don’t even want to be here and I’m fucking trained for it.”

“We could talk about you instead.”

“No.”

She hates it when his emotions turn on a dime. In the past, she played games with him for control. In recent months, she coddled him. Now, too tired after daily back and forth flights across the whole of South America and too frustrated by the lack of evidence they’ve found, she has no energy for either. “You’re stubborn and an idiot. You deserved to have her leave you, and if she’s as intelligent as I know she is, she’ll divorce you.”

“Thanks for the help,” he says, the barest trace of sarcasm in his voice. “But it wasn’t anything I couldn’t have figured out on my own.” He gets up abruptly and heads to his own sleeping bag. “I take it you can deal with it on your own.”

–

They touchdown in New York at six thirty seven in the morning four weeks after they left. Clint hasn’t spoken to Natasha since Chile. Nor has he really spoken to Bobbi or Melinda. Natasha thinks he’ll calm down soon enough, but she’s also aware that she thought that two weeks ago too. He’s silent through their debriefing with Hill except when asked a direct question. Since Hill’s already been informed of his bad mood, her only question is really just, “Do you have anything to add, Barton?” and his answer is always an abrupt, “no.”

So Natasha doesn’t have high hopes for him calming down enough to talk to her. Instead, she does something to piss him off even more. She lingers in Hill’s office as everyone files out. Clint is first to leave, striding off in a huff. His hands aren’t shaking anymore, but his temper is worse than ever, pushing everyone to the limit, even Melinda, who usually was unshakeable. Bobbi and Melinda file out languidly after him, neither of them appearing to notice Natasha is still sitting even though she was complaining a few hours ago that all she really wanted was a hot long shower. But they close the door behind them, so she knows they must suspect what she’s about to do. 

Hill looks at her with that same expectation in her face. Natasha hesitates for just a moment, wonders if it’s worth Clint’s anger afterward, if she should expect she’ll lose the only real friend she’s ever had. But if that happens… well, it’s for the best. She straightens her shoulders, steels herself. “I’d like to report Agent Barton for a class five point two infraction.”

Hill nods sharply once and pulls the paperwork from her desk. It’s already half completed. She walks Natasha through the rest of it—a recitation of the symptoms shown, the type of drugs he had with him, how bad Natasha thinks it is, and other such things. Hill calls Bobbi’s lab phone to confirm the medicine since Natasha didn’t see it. Her name is added to the report. Melinda filed the report on Clint’s behavior while waiting for them in Guatemala, so her name is already noted as someone who’s noticed his issues. She’s sure even more people have noticed. Clint is usually easygoing, usually incapable of being rattled. Natasha wonders how much of this is an act and how much of it is someone who is used to never having any solid ground in his life. When your situation changes from day to day do you just learn to go along with it? He had some control but not enough, in the end. Or was his relaxed attitude always just an act, not to scare people? 

Sometimes she remembers she really doesn’t know him all that well. 

When the paperwork is done, Natasha scrubs herself clean in the shower. She shaves, she files down her nails and picks the dirt out of them. She cleans her guns, sharpens her knives. She microwaves some canned soup and eats it with crackers that must have gotten moisture in them. But mostly, she just waits. She knows this sort of infraction is dealt with quickly, and Fury already suspects something’s wrong. Hill was already filing the report when Natasha left her office, and it’s been two hours. Natasha thinks within the next two, the decision will be made.

She leaves a message on Laila’s phone, asking if she has time for dinner tonight or if not, brunch tomorrow. Laila doesn’t work Fridays and Saturdays. And after four weeks of nonstop moving around, it’ll be a few days before they send Natasha out again. She heats some more soup and chews her way through the tough meat. She makes a grocery list and resolves to find one of those five ingredient cookbooks. She gathers up her laundry. She dusts. Laila calls her back, sounding very harassed. The conversation is short. Laila exclaims breathlessly, “I have to work late, everyone’s out with the flu, we need to finish these forms by Monday, we just had a class graduate and we have to walk everyone through the contracts, I can’t make dinner. Sorry!” Then she hangs up.

She calls back five minutes later. “Brunch! I meant to say call me in the morning for brunch!”

Natasha laughs, feeling light and happy for a moment. But the next phone call happens as soon as she hangs up with Laila. It’s Fury asking her to come to his office. She swallows thickly and goes.

Fury and Hill are waiting, along with Dr. Anderson, Clint’s usual therapist, and Dr. Lewandowski, the head of the psych ward who has prodded Natasha before. There’s another doctor there too, a woman in in a cherry red top and gray pencil skirt. Dr. Lewandowski introduces her as Dr. Gomez, their resident expert on drug addiction. Natasha breaks the tense silence by asking her where she got her top. Dr. Gomez smiles a very white, sublime smile and names a very expensive, exclusive boutique. Of course, Natasha thinks, even as she smiles back and thanks her. That top is definitely silk and probably handmade.

The tension broken, Dr. Anderson launches into a string of questions before it can reappear. Natasha answers each one as best as she can. Hill knows the answers to some too, but eventually, they’re required to call Bobbi in. 

Bobbi stumbles in. She’d likely fallen asleep in her office, judging by the yawn and her sleepy tone as she answers the doctors’ questions. Dr. Gomez takes them both through a series of questions herself too, asking more about patterns and what triggers his spiral down since he isn’t constantly addicted. When she asks gently if their marital strife might have triggered this latest one, Bobbi straightens. At first Natasha thinks she’s upset, but then she says slowly, “I’m as positive as I can be that it did. But honestly, Estela, I think he just doesn’t want to learn how to cope. And you’re amazing, I remember what you did for Michelle, but she wanted to get better, and my husband doesn’t.”

“That is a problem,” Dr. Gomez admits. “And as Dr. Anderson pointed out, Agent Barton isn’t likely to respond to an intervention. Or, to be honest, any of my other usual methods. But there has to be a long-term solution buried underneath this all.”

“He wasn’t addicted when he was dealing with me,” Natasha offers. “And I’ve never known him to shirk responsibility.”

“True,” Dr. Lewandowski says. “However, if we give him something to be responsible for, it will have to be only a short-term solution until we think of something else. He isn’t foolish. He already knows this report has been filed. Medical is holding him so he can’t leave the premises until given the solution of this meeting. If we keep giving him a responsibility, he _will_ figure it out.”

“And either quit the agency or learn how to balance his addiction and his responsibility,” Dr. Gomez finishes. “I was surprised when I first started how many people hid their addictions so well.”

“I won’t have him quit,” Fury interjects.

“You can’t exactly stop him,” Dr. Lewandowski says.

“We can’t push him into a situation where he quits.”

“What are you afraid of, Director?”

Bobbi answers. “Clint is—he loves this job. And he’s good at it. He can’t do normal. He’s never had it. If he quits, if he knows he can’t come back here without being hounded by medical and psych, he’ll go back as freelance. And then—”

“We gave him a choice when he started here,” Fury finishes. “If he goes freelancing again, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. And he knows that. He’ll make sure we shoot him before he does that.”

“Or he’ll shoot himself,” Natasha adds quietly. The room tenses again and she knows everyone heard her.

“I’m responsible for a lot of deaths,” Fury says. “Some of them I killed myself. Most of them I ordered their deaths or sent out the agents who did. I don’t like it when my agents die, especially when I could have done something to prevent it.”

“I have an idea,” Dr. Gomez says, “but it will involve a fair bit of cooperation on Agent Barton’s part, and we’ll probably need his brother for some of it.” When everyone turns to her, she explains, “Since Agent Barton’s issues are mostly rooted in the past, I thought we’d try something one of my colleagues tried once. Going back to the past in a way, to the places you used to live or to the people you’ve known. Getting some sense of closure. It’ll get worse before it gets better. But I also think a responsibility will be a good idea for the short-term, just to make sure he doesn’t flee.”

“I got a call from the FBI director,” Hill says suddenly. “HYDRA appears to be behind a rash of experimental deaths.”

“They don’t know when to quit, do they?” Dr. Anderson asks.

“HYDRA’s ours,” Fury says.

“Yes, I know,” Hill continues. “And apparently Barney Barton is one of the agents who figured it out. Inter-agency cooperation—with the help of HYDRA’s former assassin Arachne—might be… appealing to them.” 

“The responsibility part—Barton’s made himself Drew’s protector,” Fury says, nodding his approval. “And HYDRA’s been trying to operate out of some interesting places lately… like small-town Iowa.”

“The town is ten miles away from their former orphanage and only a half hour drive to their old house.”

“Even if they don’t pass through, Clint will feel compelled to visit at least his house,” Bobbi says.

“Agent Romanoff, do you have anything to add?” Dr. Gomez says kindly. “You called this meeting, but you’ve been so quiet.”

“I’m worried about deceiving him—he’s already angry enough at me—and I think I was hoping psych would put him in lock down.”

“He could quit,” Dr. Anderson says. “And would I be right to assume you agree with Director Fury and Dr. Morse on the subject of his quitting?”

She nods.

“Yes. Putting him on lock down would only work if we thought he was threat to others. We can’t keep agents if they’re a threat to just themselves. This goes back to the beginning of the agency so I can’t tell why or who did it. I’m not _that_ old.” Everyone titters. “And in any case, I do believe Agent Hill and Dr. Gomez are correct. Perhaps the best way is to give him two different things to focus on while bringing him back to the past. He’ll get worse before he’ll get better, but maybe at the end of it, he’ll be stable.”

Natasha looks at Bobbi. The final decision will rest with Fury, but she knows as the instigator of this report and as Clint’s partner, she has some say. But she doesn’t know him the way Bobbi knows him. She has never held him at night while he cried or been clung to by him after his nightmares. She hasn’t shared a life and a house and a future with him. Bobbi nods resolutely. She has some say as his wife, too, since they’re not officially separated. Natasha hesitantly says, “If you think it’s okay.”

“What are you worried about, Natasha?” Bobbi asks. “I know you’re not telling us everything.”

“I—I wouldn’t want to go back to my past. I don’t—I’m not convinced it’s the best idea.” She pauses and tries to gather her thoughts. She wants to explain why she thinks it’s a bad idea, but she doesn’t have an argument that’s not _that sounds horrible you couldn’t make me do that_. And since no one is talking about her and she has no alternatives, she feels compelled to say, “It’s maybe just me and my past. I’d do something drastic. I’m worried that he’ll commit suicide regardless. But you’re right. It might work for Clint. He’s good at ignoring the facts but not so much when they’re staring him in the face. But I don’t think we should let him know this is for him.”

“Ah, I agree,” Dr. Anderson says. “If he thinks he’s being coddled he will quit.”

“We will certainly take into consideration that it may not work, and we will stop if we feel Agent Barton is getting more out of control,” Dr. Gomez tells Natasha. “Perhaps we can say there’s no official conclusion. After all, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s already known to have an addiction, this wouldn’t be particularly damning evidence. Most of our agents would be disconsolate after what you found.”

“You’d also need to contact his civilian therapist and make her stop giving him drugs,” Natasha says. “If you haven’t already.”

“I’m awaiting a return call. His civilian therapist in an old friend of mine from medical school. She’ll listen to me. Agent Barton’s insurance has also been asked to not approve any new prescriptions as well. They’re a government-only insurance agency, so they can do that with the request of a higher up. I can only assume my school friend is aware of his job as well because of that fact.”

The meeting concludes. Natasha shakes off a worried Bobbi, telling her it’s probably lack of sleep or something. Bobbi’s worried too but the reality is neither of them have alternatives. So they will try this and hope it works.

Natasha hopes more than she used to but there’s not enough for her to hope today.


	5. if you want a shot baby cock and pull

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I abuse italics in this chapter? That's for you to decide!
> 
> trigger warnings for child death, mentions of all sorts of abuses against children including sexual, alcoholism, and abusive parents and all the same things we're usually talking about
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading this and everyone commenting!!

WINTER 2003

 

Jessica dawdles behind Barney. She followed him out of curiosity, wondering what he was going to say to his brother if he found him. Now that they found Clint, sitting in a tree thirty feet away from a decrepit cabin and watching it intently, she feels like she shouldn’t have come. Her role in this investigation is to occasionally give information as she remembers it and to play damaged ingenue. Not to interfere with whatever harebrained scheme they were using to try to fix Clint and certainly not to eavesdrop just because she’s nosy and wants to know more about him.

She stays standing at the base of the tree while Barney climbs up, muttering about how he’s just too damned old for this shit. As far as she can tell through the trees, Clint doesn’t even turn to look at him. There’s not enough room for Barney to sit on the branch with him and there aren’t any other branches that won’t break under his weight so he stays on the tree trunk reluctantly, his knuckles turning white with the strain. “Are you really doing this right now?” Barney asks. “In the middle of a mission?”

Jessica marvels at spies sometimes. As far as she knows, this is exactly where they wanted Clint to be. But if one only had Barney’s tone to judge by, they would think otherwise. Clint glares at him. “We’re not working right now. We’re suffering through fucking cornfields and porn shops next to Baptist churches.”

There are less cornfields in Iowa than Jessica would have thought, given Clint’s mutterings the closer they got. She was half-convinced there weren’t any cities in the state. But there are definitely XXX theaters and shops all along the way, some of them strangely close to churches. It makes Jessica feel unclean, even though the building are mostly unnoticeable, just plain undecorated buildings out by the highway. 

Barney gives a long-suffering sigh. “What’re you doing here? It’s been decades. You know how many families have lived there since? Five. I checked.”

Clint is silent. Barney gives up on trying to keep his grip on the tree trunk and rejoins Jessica on the ground. Feeling as though she ought to do something, she asks, “What is this place?”

She already knows the answer. Barney knows she knows, but he tells her anyway, rather loudly. “Our childhood home. Great place, isn’t it? Sometimes we managed not to freeze to death.”

“Was it always this…” She searches for a word. She can’t find it. Decrepit seems to be too harsh and yet not enough. Rough wood planks are layered over the original foundation, the would-be windows are more or less boarded up with only small pieces of glass showing through, and the roof is caving in—she thinks it won’t last through another storm, snow or rain. 

Barney seems to understand anyway. “Actually, it used to be worse. Dad never was one for maintenance. That’s what happens when you spend all your money on cheap whiskey.” He glances up at the tree. He looks like he’s struggling with something. Then he says, “Speaking of, how’re you holding up, Jess?”

“It’s good to be out and about,” she says honestly. When Director Fury had her marched into his office and given her some of the details of the ridiculous scheme, she wasn’t sure she could play her role. She wasn’t even sure she _wanted_ to be out of the cell. Being locked up was a strange comfort, knowing she had no decisions to make and no one to miss her. But being out of the cell wasn’t as bad as she feared. And although they were chasing down her former masters, she wasn’t afraid of what might happen. She wasn’t afraid she’d be torn between them and SHIELD—although officially, she is here as a temporary consultant, which as far as she can tell is a nice phrase for “prisoner who has information we can utilize.” She doesn’t blame them. They inserted a tracker in her, yes, and she’s probably being reported on, but Clint and Barney don’t feel much like jailers. Barney had taken her shopping for new clothes and even spent forty dollars on the department store red lipstick and mascara she liked to wear without much complaining. 

Clint, on the other hand, had done nothing but complain. He was suspicious of this burgeoning cooperation between the agencies, and he hadn’t seemed to believe anyone’s spin on it. At least he hadn’t taken it out on her; Jessica takes that as a sign she’s playing wounded and fragile well. Or possibly he knows she wasn’t given much of a choice in the matter. Fury told her she could do it or she could get shot because he wasn’t running a hotel for doe-eyed would-be assassins who couldn’t be bothered to eat half the time. It shocked her, but it also shocked her into action and she considers that a good thing. Most of the time. Not now, lingering awkwardly. “I take it you don’t have good memories here,” she says because someone should say something.

“Not really, no,” Barney says after he looks up at Clint, who folds his arms defiantly and refuses to look at them. “But luckily we don’t have many memories of here.”

“So what are you looking for here?” she asks Clint, who glances at her briefly. For a second, she wonders if she overstepped. Not being totally human, she can see through the branches fairly clearly, and she recognizes suspicion in the glance he sent her. But he turns back to staring at the house so she turns to Barney helplessly.

He shrugs. “Who knows? He’s always been good at torturing himself unnecessarily. The family that lives here now is down on their luck because of horrendous hospital bills. Not a drunk parent. Their kid had leukemia. She didn’t make it. But you know, Clint can save everyone but himself.”

Jessica thinks _that’s_ laying it on thick but from what she has learned, it’s accurate, and when she glances up, Clint is sliding down off the tree. He lands easily next to Barney. “I’m not interested in your sermons. I’m here because it was fucking home for a while and I wanted to see it since you dragged me back to this hellhole anyway.”

“I wouldn’t call Iowa a hellhole, exactly,” she says. They both flicks looks her way, Clint’s dismissive, Barney’s amused.

“And HYDRA dragged you back here not us,” Barney says. “Take it out on them.”

Clint kicks a rock and spins on his heel, turning back in the direction of their safe house. “Don’t worry. I intend to.”

–

They find the HYDRA base on day three of Iowa. Clint’s mood hasn’t improved but he also hasn’t said much so Jessica finds she can’t really get upset with him. He leaves her and Barney to chatter about anything they can find to talk about. When it’s not the mission, it’s usually the history of war, the only thing Jessica feels she genuinely knows about. Sometimes they don’t talk at all but the heavy silence from Clint leads to uncomfortable tension so they find something. Whatever’s on the television. The book on vintage cars Jessica picks up for two dollars at a resale bookshop because there’s nothing else to buy. Whether they prefer Coke or Pepsi, Sprite or ginger ale. Whether she ought to try coffee or stick to her tisanes—she has no idea how caffeine might affect her. Whether peppermint or spearmint is better, if it’s worth stopping to buy donuts at six in the morning after a long night of searching, if they should have pizza or burgers or Chinese. Clint offers nothing not mission related, and most of the time, he is carving arrows or fiddling with electronic arrowheads, not even seeming to hear them. She wonders at that—Barney is always careful to keep his voice low. She can always hear him clearly but then she has super-hearing. But when she talks as low as he does, he can’t always hear her, so she wants to know why he bothers speaking so quietly. Sometimes it seems like Clint isn’t aware they’re talking at all. She wonders if that’s Barney’s intent, to make sure Clint can’t hear them. She’s caught sight of Clint in the rear view mirror looking up at them and noticing their mouths moving and frowning. She doesn’t ask; if someone wants to tell they will.

They spend twenty two hours canvassing the base and the surrounding area. This, at least, isn’t tense. Clint is calm and focused. Barney is silent. Jessica is awkward, though, having never done a canvass outside training. She knows what she’s doing theoretically. In practice, it requires a delicate hand when you never know what might be a trap, a secret door, or just a burrowing place for an animal. Jessica thinks she acquits herself well. 

Except for that moment. The one where she saw the man she loved. Jared is tall and fair-haired, and he didn’t really stand out among the people coming and going from the area. But she knows his face better than she knows her own. She froze, her heart racing and elation taking over before she remembered. Either Jared was brainwashed into a relationship with her or he was paid for it. But he hadn’t entered it on his own free will, hadn’t genuinely wanted to be with her, and now she was a traitor to the cause he was devoted to. A cause that killed people for no real reason. 

She doesn’t tell her partners. It must be terrible that she’s already keeping secrets but she can’t bring herself to tell them. In any case, Otto Vermis appears in the area and he is clearly the bigger threat. He was her trainer, her jailer, the only father figure she remembers. He was probably the one who convinced or brainwashed Jared. He calls himself Supreme Hydra, and Jessica thinks he has some sort of aristocratic title but she can’t remember. Seeing him produces a similar feeling to seeing Jared—heart racing, palms sweating, lungs desperate for air—but this time it’s out of fear. He won’t hesitate to kill her. She is a traitor. She never thought she would be. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized what she had done. 

She could go back, she supposes. She could tell them Hawkeye’s real name, tell them he had a brother in the FBI and give him his name too. She could tell them the layout of half of the New York SHIELD base. She knew a dozen small details as well. If she crawled back to Otto and revealed these secrets, all would be—not forgiven, Otto doesn’t _forgive_ , but it would be accepted with minimal punishment.

It’s not that she thinks SHIELD can be called the good side in this. They operate in the realm of gray morality like all intelligence agencies. But she also know their idea of punishing their agents doesn’t involve broken bones or starvation, and as much as the agents complain about the matchbox apartments, they aren’t actually prison cells. Her cell in the basement of the agency had been similar to the room Otto had given her. Little privacy, little way to leave if he didn’t want you to. Little comfort. 

Barney throws his arm around her. She heard him coming so she doesn’t jump but it’s a near thing in her distress. “He’s not going to get you.”

“You can’t promise that,” she tells him. 

“I can. I do.”

–

At nine in the morning, Bobbi stumbles out of a farmhouse and throws up in the snow. Two dozen dead children, as cold as icicles with their blood frozen solid in the Norwegian winter, their eyes and tongues gouged out and sitting neatly on cute little plates decorated with reindeer. Their hands had been stabbed to the table with steak knives. Behind her, she can hear Natasha gagging too. Rebecca is silently watching them. Her face is gray and green underneath her scarf but after the last few times, she hasn’t been sick.

“If we don’t find them soon…” Natasha starts. She doesn’t need to finish. Eight hundred children found mutilated over the last two months. Even more found poisoned. The total count since the start of the investigation was nearly five thousand. Many of the children were homeless or orphaned, and there was no way of knowing how many children might have been taken. This isn’t even the first time this week she’s seen mutilated children, and she’s starting to have nightmares again. She thought she was over that. She thought she had built up a numbness to horror by now. 

Bobbi dry heaves again then forces herself to stand. They have to do something here first. Call in the reserves—it’s an agency wide mission by now—and they have to search for information. And… “We have a leak,” she says.

“Yes,” Rebecca agrees tensely. “They shouldn’t have known we were coming.”

“We didn’t even know we were coming until this morning,” Natasha grumbles.

Rebecca fumbles for her phone. It’s too cold outside, in the negatives, so they troop back inside. At least there’s no stench since the bodies have frozen. It’s a small consolation. Natasha and Bobbi start to search while Rebecca calls for backup. There’s nothing. Papers have been burned in the hearth of the office fireplace, and all Bobbi can recognize in it is a scrap that looks like a ledger. The desk is empty. She finds hiding places, but they’re all empty too. The safe is empty. The basement where the children is empty—although she has the distressing thought that it’s intentional. Likely the children slept on the floor; there have been no indications of the barest idea of comfort. 

She meets up with Natasha on the second floor of the building. Stone-faced, Natasha says, “Pedophilia and sadism accounted for on the upstairs rooms. They left the whips.”

Bobbi wills herself not to throw up again. “Nothing downstairs. It’s all been burned or cleared out.”

Rebecca joins them. “There’s fresh concrete on the perimeter but I don’t see anything else. I requested the equipment to break it. I assume it’s not bodies or they would have left them out too. Unless it’s squeamish partners and not kids.”

“That would mean we could track the partners,” Natasha considers. “And I, for one, would prefer that.”

“We’ll know soon. They had a team on standby in the nearest town.”

Within the hour, the team is there. It takes another hour to carefully break the concrete. Underneath it lies three adult men who had been shot execution-style. Bobbi recognizes two of them: James Jamison—not his real name, obviously, it’s much the less interesting Johnathan Williams—and Arthur Hughes. Both Englishmen were part of the radical anarchist set which has never been linked to this sort of thing before. In fact, she once infiltrated a meeting in which Hughes had proselytized about how the governments and businesses of the world didn’t care about children and abused them horribly, including sexually. He accused some prominent businessmen of stealing children off the streets and locking them in a sadomasochism dungeon built especially for that purpose. She relays this information to her partners. They study the bodies again. Then Natasha says, “I’m pretty sure the third one is Leonid Kuznetsov.”

“He worked with the Red Room?”

“No. He worked with HYDRA.”

–

In Serbia, Bobbi tracks down a man who calls himself Rockberry. He’s a contact she hasn’t had cause to talk to in a long time, but he might know something about this. She finds him in a small home of the edge of Belgrade, and she wonders briefly why he moved. He used to swear he hated Belgrade. She knocks on his door loudly, and it swings open with a noise that sounds an awful lot like nails on a chalkboard. “Mockingbird, welcome,” he says in German. He’s German by birth, the grandson of a high-ranking Nazi and the Jewish woman he raped. If anyone will help them track down HYDRA, it’s him. “I haven’t seen your lovely face in years. Would you like some podvarak?”

“No thanks.”

“What do you need to know?”

He never gives information up without playing games, and she’s not up to it today. So she pulls out three pictures of mutilated children from her pocket and throws them on his table. His face goes white. He curses. “Who did this?”

“We’re finding ties to the Dubiki crime family and HYDRA.”

“HYDRA. Of course. How silly of me to forget what kind of people they are. I cannot say I heard about this. But it is not surprising they have the Dubiki family in their grasp. Many members were arrested and assets frozen.”

“Someone tattled?”

Rockberry sits down at his table. He’s not very old, but he isn’t young either. Today, he looks tired. He looks sick. “You’re dying,” she says when he doesn’t answer. He’s too gaunt, too gray, too tired. He doesn’t have long.

“Cancer.”

“You’re here for medical aid.”

“I am closer to the hospital here, yes. Will it matter much? No, I don’t believe so. They say I have six months to live, if I am lucky.”

A timer beeps. He starts to get up but Bobbi crosses the kitchen to turn it off. “Take them out?” she asks in German. He nods and thanks her. “Someone tattled?” she asks again. 

“Yes,” he tells her when she hands him a plate of podvarak and tries not to wrinkle her nose. She hates sauerkraut. “Yes,” he repeats. “They aren’t that loyal, you know. The Dubiki family is mostly hired hands and in-laws these days. They killed off each other trying to be the head of the family. Currently Nikodem is the head. In order to win, he had to kill his brother. And his brother’s wife. But he very foolishly left his ten year old niece alive, and the girl showed up at the local Interpol office with a pile of documents and the key to her mother’s bank safe with even more information.”

“She’s getting protection, I hope.”

“Of course. And the Dubiki family is scattered and penniless. Those who are not in prison are hidden away and will not come out for a long time. But they are experts in poison, so I imagine some would ally themselves with HYDRA. Money over morals, as you know, Mockingbird.”

She knows. Sometimes she feels like she’s the only spy she knows that hadn’t done that. But that’s because she’s been working for SHIELD from the start. Not that that means anything. There have been plenty of agents who have been fired for such activities. “Can you tell me anything about Leonid Kuznetsov?”

“A common name.”

“He’s a HYDRA rep and has been for at least two decades. Dyed black hair, naturally blonde, green eyes, looks like a knockoff, less handsome Dolph Lundgren.” She rifles through the pictures in her pocket until she finds the right one.

“Oh. Him. He was tasked with protecting HYDRA’s interests.” He peers closer at the photo. “Interesting. HYDRA rarely kills assassination style. And that bruise on his throat, the span of it, the size—I do believe you ought to be looking for the Winter Soldier.”

“He’s a ghost.”

“No one is a ghost. He is a HYDRA operative with ties to the Red Room—and the Black Widow, who rumor has it has been seen with you recently, Mockingbird. Rumor also has it they were lovers until it all went wrong.”

She thinks of Clint and shuts down those thoughts immediately. “Doesn’t it always in this business?”

He hums an agreement. “He has a metal arm, he is only tasked with the most vital of missions, and he has never been beaten.”

“Everyone loses at least once.”

“Well, he has yet to meet his match then. Tread carefully, Mockingbird.”

“Will the Winter Soldier talk?”

He fiddles with his fork for a moment. “What do you know about Captain America? World War II?”

“I’ve met people who knew Captain America,” she tells him honestly. “And I know what I read in the history books. Or are you talking about the supersoldier serum? I know a lot more about that. I studied biology.”

He grins. “That explains everything. I wondered how you knew so much about Werner’s potion when I met you in Cainta. Yes, the serum. HYDRA tried to recreate in the Winter Soldier. It works—but he wasn’t a HYDRA operative in his past life.”

“They tested the serum on prisoners of war, didn’t they?”

“Yes. It is rumored the Winter Soldier was a prisoner who isn’t easily controlled when awake for long periods of time. I do not know how true it is but it is worth looking into, if you must. If you can’t keep him out of the freezing chamber, then he won’t talk. But I doubt he will talk anyway. He is kept frozen, and he is taken out only to be pointed at a target.”

“He won’t know much, if anything,” Bobbi translates. Which is unfortunate but par for the course. “Do you know who his handlers are?”

Rockberry shakes his head.

–

Natasha is debating taking a bath when Bobbi comes back from visiting her contact and says without hesitation, “My contact thinks Kuznetsov was killed by the Winter Soldier,” and Natasha’s heart does not stop but it definitely misses a beat or three. She curses in Russian.

“So is it true you were lovers?” Bobbi asks. Rebecca looks up from her phone with interest.

How would Bobbi’s contact know that? She didn’t realize anyone but their handlers knew about their relationship, and even then they only knew at the end. But asked point blank means someone knew something somewhere. And Bobbi’s contact knew those people. “Yes, James and I were lovers,” Natasha says. She kicks off her boots. She definitely soaking a hot bath now—and maybe afterward she ought to dig the good Swedish vodka out of her suitcase. “Did Hawk back that up?”

Bobbi frowns at her. “No, my contact just said so. I haven’t spoken to Hawk in weeks, and I don’t think he wants to talk to me anyway. He knows about the Winter Soldier? Who is he—James?”

“That’s what they called him, at least,” she says, smothering any inconvenient emotions that well up inside her—and all emotions are inconvenient as far as she’s concerned right now. “I don’t know more than that. He always thought—he thought his name was something else, but he also said James didn’t sound wrong either, so I don’t know. They never had a last name for him. Hawkeye knows—something. I’m not entirely sure what he knows about the connection between my James and the Winter Soldier, but I think he knows something.” A mission in Surat looking for whoever was stealing diamonds. She’d been too honest. Even if that was before he was working for SHIELD, even if he never brought up again. He might have forgotten even, but she hadn’t. She had raged, and in her rage, she’d said so much. Because James had been in the city too, but their paths didn’t cross. She never knew, still doesn’t know, if she was relieved or disappointed.

“Do you two ever talk?”

Bobbi means it sarcastically, but Natasha feels the now familiar sting of Clint’s silence stab at her again. “He won’t answer my calls.” Barney answered once to tell her that his brother was barely speaking to him and Jessica, let alone anyone else. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear he was doing better, that this ill conceived idea was working. At least they managed to terminate some HYDRA agents while they were at it. A base in Slovenia had been destroyed; Natasha thinks this is the only good thing to have come out of it, but how can she know? Clint doesn’t speak to her, and Barney wouldn’t tell her anyway, and sometimes you had to get worse before you got better.

Bobbi’s expression goes sympathetic but before she can say anything, Natasha continues. “He’s American. James. He sounds like he’s from New York. But you won’t get anything out of him. When he’s out of freezing for too long, he starts remembering things. Once, he told me he thought his name was James but no one called him by it, they used a nickname. He couldn’t remember what it was. Sometimes he remembers things from New York but tourist things like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. I was never sure if he was remembering them or if he just knew them. But then he thought he used to work on Coney Island—I never knew what to believe. Or if it was all a lie, implanted in him.”

“According to my contact, it’s likely he was a POW from World War II.”

Rebecca makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat.“If we can get a picture of his face, we might be able to figure out who he is.”

“He wears a mask,” Natasha says. She’s always wondered at that; now she wonders if they did so because he’ll be recognized otherwise. It would be stupid of HYDRA to choose someone recognizable to experiment on. It’s why the Red Room had little girls stolen from orphanages. No one would miss them, and no one would recognize them. Not that anyone cared back then anyway. Not after the Revolution. Not when you could barely feed yourself. “And he’s not likely to take it off. Even if you could find him and wake him. If he was out, he’s back in again. They won’t leave him out, won’t let him become cognizant.”

“His handlers?”

“A rotating door of them. Most of the ones I knew are dead now and the others must be too old to deal with him. He doesn’t always go quietly with the minions.”

“Then we table him for now,” Rebecca orders. “But Mockingbird can tell us why her contact thought it was the Winter Soldier.”

“The bruises on his throat. He said the Soldier had a metal arm. He thinks it’s the same size. And we know the bruises were too deep to be made by something fully human. His neck was more or less crushed.”

Natasha thinks of how easily James once broke her wrist just by grabbing it on a mission to pull her along. He’d been… confused, she thinks. If she remembers correctly, and she’ll never know if she does, he had stared down her bent wrist with wide, shocked eyes, like he wasn’t sure how he had done it. Then he’d been apologetic, stolen some gauze from the nearest pharmacy, and wrapped up her wrist carefully. Too carefully for what they were trained for. Too carefully if someone was watching. And someone was always watching him. But that wasn’t what had gotten them caught in the end. She still wasn’t sure what did. “Yes,” she says slowly, thinking of how long it took to fix her wrist, how long it was in a cast for even with all the technology the Red Room had, “he could shatter bones easily. He didn’t always have the best control of the arm. I guess he wasn’t awake enough to learn how to use it properly. He wasn’t aware of his strength.”

“If he wasn’t awake enough,” Rebecca starts in a tone Natasha has long since learned means ‘we have awkward questions to ask about your past,’ “how were you lovers?”

“He came to train us. A loan. He was very dangerous, and we were fighting quite a lot of American spies at the time—I guess that’s why they chose him if he was an American soldier, although they didn’t tell us anything. He was partnered with me for missions sometimes. They wanted him to do more than assassinate, and they wanted me to learn some new things too. He tried to hide how much he was remembering and our relationship. I don’t know what got us caught in the end. But I was punished and he was put back into cryo-freezing.”

“Do you agree with my contact, that he’ll know nothing even if we can find him and ask him to talk?” Bobbi asks.

“His mind is wiped both before and after he goes into freezing.”

–

Trudging through a winter wilderness only makes Natasha think of James and their training exercise on the Siberian tundra where they had a terrifying encounter with a polar bear and lost half their packs. James had radioed to have them removed from the exercise. When their handlers coldly asked why they deemed it necessary, Natasha screamed at the radio, “Because you didn’t train us for wild animals!” Ivan slapped her when they returned, which was probably the least painful punishment anyone ever received at the Red Room and therefore something that barely registered in her mind. It now strikes her that the punishment was because she had been disrespectful and yelled and not because of her valid point. The Red Room didn’t send anyone out on the tundra again—unless they didn’t want them to come back.

“How much farther?” Rebecca pants out. “I’m pretty sure I’m getting frostbite.”

Bobbi stops at that to look her over even as Rebecca protests it was a joke. Natasha uses their pause to catch up with them. She hadn’t realized in her daydreaming that she’d lagged behind. “But seriously,” Rebecca asks as they start walking again. “How long?”

“We’re five miles away,” Bobbi says. “And the whole walk was only fifteen. You’ve walked more.”

“I’m getting old. What can I say?”

Bobbi snorts. Natasha agrees. At this rate they’ll be there in under four hours, which Natasha thinks is pretty good since it’s cold and snowy and they’re weighed down by packs. Even though she still thinks this is a foolish mission, finding some idiot who _might_ know something in the middle of Greenland. But their latest attempts to find informants has failed so here they are. SHIELD’s known about this guy for a while apparently, but no one bothered to check in with him. Which makes sense, she supposes, because this man can’t possibly be sane if he’s living in one of the coldest parts of Greenland. Not to mention she can’t imagine he _can_ hear much all the way in Greenland. It’s not exactly a hotbed of international criminal intrigue. They save that for Denmark. 

When they finally reach the cabin, Natasha has decided reindeer look stupid, she never wants to live in such an area ever again, and if this man can’t tell them anything, she just might have to kill Bobbi for suggesting it. 

At his front door, Rebecca steps back behind Bobbi. “You know him best.”

“You used to date him,” Bobbi argues. Interesting tidbit but Natasha doesn’t care.

“Which means he’ll respond to you better.”

“I guess,” Bobbi agrees tentatively. It doesn’t fill Natasha with much faith in this mission. Bobbi knocks, and the door is thrown open almost immediately. Natasha recoils just as abruptly even as the guilt for the action registers. The man—Vigtore, she thinks Bobbi says in greeting—has a face and neck mottled with acid burns and a mouth that has been sliced through so the left side is drooping pitifully.

Bobbi reaches for his hand with a smile. “I’m sorry I haven’t come sooner.”

“I imagine SHIELD keeps you busy, Dr. Morse,” he says with a light accent. Natasha starts at the use of Bobbi’s name. “Rebecca, my dear, always lovely to see you. And who is this with you?” He turns to her more fully and Natasha sees the exact moment he recognizes her. “Black Widow. I...” He throws a glance at Bobbi. “She’s working for SHIELD?”

“Yes,” Rebecca says smoothly, as if the woman who talked Nick Fury’s partner into cutting out his eye turning around and allying herself with Fury himself was a perfectly normal turn of events. Which it might be in their careers. Lots of people have jumped ship to SHIELD in the past. Less likelihood of ending up in prison and you’re basically doing the same thing you’ve always done. “This is Natasha. Nat, this is Vigtore, a former SHIELD agent. His second cousin is Count Otto Vermis.”

Natasha recognizes the name. The count is a disliked German whose family has long been out of money. For the past forty or so years, since he decided his father’s long defunct title was his, he had been running around trying to acquire as much power as possible. After an incident in the sixties where he slapped a glove in a man’s face and challenged him to a duel at dawn because he wasn’t greeted by his “title,” people agreed to call him Count Otto, but that was mostly out of mocking these days since Germany had abolished nobility titles before Vermis was even born. She thinks he had to have grown up in an environment where his father complained about that constantly or he wouldn’t make such a big deal about it. And what did it matter if he was a count anyway? It was hardly the highest-ranking title, and at the time, he possessed no money to make him palatable to anyone. Now he wields power but not the sort of power that makes people want to throw their lot in with him unless they’re willing to be branded Nazis. Not many people are even if they spew the same rhetoric. 

Vigtore gestures them in and sets them up with hot tea and blueberry cake before asking what they came for. Natasha keeps her head down the entire time, unable to look him in the eye. She knows she’s seen—and _caused_ —worse disfigurements in her life but this seems terrible for some reason. Maybe it’s the rest of him—slightly plump and good-natured, easy to laugh and discuss with Rebecca the past. Before this happened. Before he had to leave the intelligence community since he was so recognizable. Was his life ruined by it? Did he lose his sense of worth? Did he have trouble looking the mirror afterward? There’s a mirror in the living room, one with a large ornate silver frame that looks like it’s decorated with Cupids, but she couldn’t tell if it was merely decorative or not. He hadn’t looked in it, but that’s hardly indicative of anything when he had guests.

Rebecca leads the battery of questions they throw at him. He doesn’t sound like he knows much of anything, but he’s willing to help. He has contacts still, and family he can talk to, and he’s more than willing to leave Greenland for warmer pastures. Natasha is asked to help him pack, and she rises and follows him without ever looking up from the pale wooden floor. 

“I am not hideous, am I, Black Widow?” he asks as he shuts the door to his room closed behind her. To her, it sounds ominous but she thinks that’s an overreaction. Her long honed instincts aren’t screaming that something is wrong. And he still sounds friendly, a thinner, younger version of Santa Claus.

“I—”

“It was one of your sisters who did this,” he says calmly as he starts to wrestle a duffle out of an entanglement of boot laces. 

She goes to help him. “I have no sisters.”

“Is that not what the Red Room called you? Sisters?”

She wrenches the duffle free while she wonders. She doesn’t remember. She remembers a lot more than she used to but not this. Yet it doesn’t feel wrong. It feels like she’s welcoming back a piece of her history. “That sounds right,” she tells him. “But I don’t remember it all.”

He starts pulling clothes down. “Is it freezing in Scandinavia? Well, not like it is here, I suppose. I worked a mission in Antarctica, you know, one of my first. Nothing seemed truly cold after that.”

“No,” she says, even though it’s clear by the way he’s pulling clothes out of burnished mahogany chests he’s not awaiting a response. “I guess nothing does.”

“She was blonde,” he says, voice quiet with remembrance. “The Widow who tossed acid in my face. Long, true blonde hair. And there was something cruel in her face—not something even you possess, Natasha. A sort of feral glee when she slashed her knife across my face. And her eyes were strange, such a pale green.”

Yelena, she thinks. She hated to use the word feral but Yelena had a sadistic streak and a wildness about her. And eyes as clear as glass. Out loud, she says, “I’m only glad it wasn’t me.”

“No, you were Fury’s arch-nemesis. You didn’t bother much with the rest of SHIELD.”

–

The HYDRA base in on fire. Clint dodges a bullet and winces when he stumbles on his sprained ankle. It seemed like such a good plan. Their recon was perfect, they had surprised their enemies… and then Jessica had clammed up when Otto Vermis shouted, “ _You_!” with as much contempt as he could muster to make him sound like a melodramatic stage actor. He and Barney couldn’t do her job, and their perfect plan had crumbled more than he expected. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, but he’d been hoping they could mostly keep to their plan. Instead the door he came in through is blocked by fire, and he’s running through the base on a twisted ankle, his ears ringing from the constant gunshots, his lungs hurting from the smoke. 

He ran out of arrows fifteen minutes ago and isn’t close enough to anyone he’s shot to reuse one, so he grabs a gun off a dead HYDRA agent and starts shooting. Barney’s already fought his way up to the control center, and Jessica is… somewhere. Hopefully helping them, but he’d settle for her hiding if it meant she wasn’t betraying them. Otto Vermis already fled the scene, not slowed down by the bullet Barney put in his leg. His highest ranking agents left with him and Clint and Barney didn’t enough time or manpower to get past the wall of cannon fodder agents.

Clint dodges a hail of bullets and takes a sharp left around a corner. He barely manages to duck out of the way of oncoming HYDRA agents, and as they tangle with their own, he grabs another gun and runs back the way he came, out through the main floor and into the back. 

Jessica is standing in the middle of the room dripping blood from her mouth. But for the first time in the last twenty minutes, she doesn’t look terrified. Her cheeks are flushed and her mouth twisted in anger, the blood adding a creepy feeling to the whole look, and she extends her hands and takes out a dozen HYDRA agents at once. Clint feels the invisible blast pass him by in a rush of heat and glances behind him. Abandoning his quiver, he grabs two new guns off the floor and rushes up the stairs to the control room, taking out as many agents as he can. No one follows him so he assumes Jessica is keeping them down.

Barney is struggling with a room full of enemies when Clint bursts in, having traded his guns two more times. The ensuing fight is painful. In a small room, it’s easy for a bullet to hit an ally or even worse, ricochet and hit the shooter. Clint abandons the guns two minutes into the fight and starts throwing punches instead. Within minutes his knuckles are bleeding, and he’s pretty sure he’s been smacked on the head with something but the adrenaline is in full effect so the only thing he knows for certain is that there’s blood dripping down the side of his face. Another blast of heat passes him by. He prays Jessica won’t accidentally hit him as he moves. Punch, kick, dodge, elbow to the ribs, all at a punishing pace.

And then in a blink of an eye, it’s over. The sudden silence is always a shock. He takes a deep breath and immediately begins coughing. Jessica’s hand comes down on his back, awkwardly, like she’s not sure if she should be pounding it. “Let’s get out of here,” Barney says, tugging the USB drive from the computer and inserting another one that will shut down the system completely. 

They make their way down the stairs carefully. The smoke must be miles high now—it wasn’t what they were planning. Some idiot was playing with a flame thrower too close to the stores of gasoline. He toasted himself, which is what he deserved, but that makes getting out harder. Clint’s chest feels crackly and his breath rattles. He can taste ash on his tongue. The air is a gray mass in front of them. The stairs have fallen, flaming debris all over them, breaking several steps. He manages to leap over them but only barely. He tumbles on his ankle and hits the ground hard. He feels Barney and Jessica hoist him up and out. 

When they get to the car, Clint doubles over coughing. Barney is coughing now too but Clint only hears it distantly. Not the sort of lack of sound that means his hearing aids are the fritz. No, this is the sort of distance that makes him think he’s thirty seconds from passing out. 

The rest he remembers in pieces as he fades in and out of consciousness: Barney and Jessica arguing about whether they should go to the nearest hospital or try to find the nearest base—“We’re not SHIELD,” Barney says at some point. “We don’t have hospitals in our bases.” At which point Barney starts up a hacking cough and Jessica makes him pull the car over as Clint is trying to take a deep breath of the air—he’ll give Iowa this, and only this: the weather is decent tonight, not intensely cold, not too dry or too humid. It still does nothing for his chest. Then he fades out again.

He comes to in the hospital, a breathing mask over his face. Jessica is sitting in between his bed and Barney’s, her face smudged with soot, her red jumpsuit mottled. He wonders briefly what the hospital staff thinks, if Jessica showed them their badges, if his chest will stop hurting anytime soon. 

He thinks, _I want a drink_ and _Am I an addict_ and _this night was a disaster_ , and then he’s out again.

–

“Your ankle is broken,” Georgina says sternly when Clint tries to stand. He feels a brief flicker of irritation, a momentary wish that SHIELD had not swooped in and taken him and Barney back to the New York base to recover instead of leaving them in an Iowa hospital. It’s gone as quickly as it came. 

“What’re you gonna do? Tell Bobbi?” He forces himself to stand, breathing through the pain as he settles his weight evenly on his feet. It’s the first time he’s stood in a week and it’s not going well so far—if the bed wasn’t behind him, he’s pretty sure he would tumble straight to the floor. And he doesn’t need a broken nose to make his breathing worse. 

“You think that’s not an effective threat?” Georgina asks irritably. “Fine, but I thought you were going to woo her back.”

“I’m not wooing anyone.”

“Obviously.” As she turns away she mutters something else too, but Clint doesn’t catch it.

“Sit your ass down,” Barney says from where he’s leaning against the wall. His voice is loud and clear, like he knows Clint is having trouble hearing. And maybe he does know; he used to be able to tell everything from Clint’s facial expressions. Even things Clint didn’t know he felt. “The last thing we need is you breaking your leg next.”

“It’s only a hairline fracture,” Clint argues as he takes a tentative step just to be contradictory. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Georgina throws her hands up. He takes another step. The pain is—intense. But weirdly welcome. He needs something to distract him from his obsessive need for a whiskey. But he can’t sneak out and no one will bring him alcohol—no one will even let him have any pain medicine, which doesn’t really jibe with the “addiction unclear; no precautions taken at this time” status he was given. Not that he had ever been convinced that was how they actually felt. He just wonders what exactly the plan had been. Keep him too busy to think about sleeping pills and whiskey? It hadn’t ever worked; he went to sleep thinking of them, and slept thinking of them, and woke thinking of them. During his waking hours, they were always in the back of his mind and there were enough things around that could pull them to the surface: passing by a bar or a pharmacy, billboard signs on the highway, the mere thought of Bobbi, the only thoughts that torture him more. Georgina is right, Clint said he wasn’t going to lose her, but now he has no idea if that’s the best idea. Who wants to be married to a struggling addict? No one, that was who. If his mother had known beforehand (and maybe she had, maybe she thought she could change Harold Barton, maybe she hadn’t know the extent of it) would she have married him?

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. His parents are both dead, and Bobbi is—gone. Not his wife anymore and not his ex, and maybe it’s the nebulous void that makes him feel so disoriented with their life together. He knows how to run a mission, knows how to take down a building, take down sect of HYDRA, those pests that never went away no matter how many times they were defeated. He knows how to shoot straight and throw knives and how to create a bomb and hotwire a car and lie his way into a party he has no business being at. He does not know how to be happy. He would settle for content. He likes going home and cooking, likes studying all the things he never got a chance to before. He likes their little house and their little two foot patch of grass behind it that they never did anything with and he likes their neighbors for the most part. And he likes the kids that skateboard past him when he leaves his house, and he likes the old Jewish man at the bakery who has framed photos of his dogs on the counter that he changes out every month. And he likes his job, he really does, because some people need to be taken down and Clint wants to be the person that does it. 

Contentment is fleeting, happiness more so. He hasn’t figured out how to silence the devil on his shoulder telling him to buy a bottle of whiskey, what’s the worst that can happen, but while doing nothing but lying around, he has figured out that his good days far outweighed his bad. So maybe he hadn’t been restless and unsettled, maybe he’d just been bullheaded and ungrateful.

He takes another step. Physical pain he can deal with, so he takes the throbbing pain gladly. Another step and another, slow and steady, until he’s walked the length of the room and found himself back to where he starts. Georgina is scribbling on his chart. Barney is silent, watching him through narrowed eyes, body slowly relaxing when Clint finally settles onto the bed with a motion that is more like a collapse than anything else. Amazing how an eight by eight square foot room can feel like a ten mile marathon when your lungs refuse to fill up with air and your foot is throbbing in pain.

He settles back against his pillows, suddenly drained. It isn’t comfortable sleeping propped up on pillows. It makes his neck hurt, and he’s already in enough pain. His head hurts from the six stitches he needed, he took a bullet to the arm at some point though he doesn’t remember anything hitting him, his ankle is on fire, his chest feels like something is sitting on it when he tries to breathe. The ashy taste on his tongue is only just starting to dissipate, and it’s the symptom he’s most disturbed by. They assure him it will go away in time. 

Georgina gives him some more instructions, but he doesn’t pay the slightest bit of attention. Barney will let him know. And in a few days, they’ll be gone again, with him stuck running the mission while Jessica and Barney are on the ground. At least McKay is back; at least Maria will be stuck with him too. Clint wonders briefly if Fury doesn’t trust him to do it. If Fury doesn’t want to leave him in a hotel room without supervision.

He dozes off some point and jerks awake with a start at the click of high heels echoing across the floor. He opens his eyes reluctantly. Bobbi is standing by his bed in a red cocktail dress and her impossibly glossy tortoiseshell glasses. Her fingers smooth over the sheets nervously before she says, “I’d like to sell the house.”

Half-convinced this is some sort of fever dream, although he doesn’t think he had a fever at any point during the week, he repeats, “Sell the house?”

“Yes. Sell the house. It’s… too big for one person.”

_So you’re not planning on coming back ever_ wars with _well, it’s not like you’ve given her a reason to come back_. So he doesn’t say, “It’s just big enough for two.” Instead, he struggles to sit up and when his chest decides just then is a good time to remind him he’s had smoke inhalation poisoning by making him hack up a lung, he realizes that he is, in fact, fully awake. God fucking damn it. 

Bobbi pats his back a little. He reaches for the water Georgina left on the bedside table and manages to fill the glass and get it to his mouth with minimal sloshing. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were globe-trotting.”

“We brought Vigtore back. You’ve met him, right? We’re trying to track down the Dubiki family’s HYDRA contact. Rebecca and I thought with Vigtore being Vermis’s cousin, he might be able to get closer than we could.”

“Vermis was in Iowa.”

“So Barney told me. Rumor has it he was checking on whatever they were building.”

“They’re not building it now.” Clint had shot a few explosive arrows into the room where they were building. He’d been trying not to but it hadn’t mattered when there was already a fire starting two rooms down. 

“No, they’re not. Although you three are semi-responsible for a sizable chunk of woodland being set on fire.”

“Are you gonna stand here blaming me or did you have an actual reason?”

Her expressions pinches for a second. “The house, Clint.”

“What do I care? I don’t live there anymore.”

“Your name is still on the paperwork.”

“Just give me whatever I need to sign.”

“Well, your mood hasn’t improved.”

“Did you expect it to?”

“No. No, I know better than that.” She turns sharply and strides off. 

Right, he thinks. So she was involved in… whatever this is. More than ever, he’s convinced they’re all up to something. And he doesn’t want to play along.


	6. you don't even gotta have a reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title chosen because... who even knows what i'm writing anymore. not me. definitely not me. sorry this chapter and the last were shorter than usual; i temporarily lost the thread of the story. i think i have it back but i wanted to post an update before i ended reworking the story entirely.

_Midwinter 2004_

Clint is not entirely sure how he ended up with guns pointed at him at a funeral. He hadn’t even said anything wrong. He hadn’t said much at all. He thought he was doing a fairly good job of being the sort of questionable acquaintance that Henri Gagnon cultivated. (Real name: Arthur Harris, Canadian, age 68, six foot two, felled by a heart attack likely helped along by some poison—although given the man’s propensity for fried foods, chewing tobacco, and women a third of his age, it might not have been. Clint might also have had a heart attack if he was screwing the twenty-something year old crying at Gagnon’s casket. She has fake red hair, a fake nose, fake lips, a fake tan, fake breasts, and fake sobs. His will left her with eight million dollars, most of it legitimate and therefore not likely to be seized by SHIELD. So she didn’t care.)

But at some point, someone realized Clint was not just another random person of the rough sort with whom Henri routinely fraternized. And what started as a fistfight became a knife fight and now Clint is face to face with some grizzled old man that looks like a knockoff mob boss holding a nine millimeter to his face. Clint pauses, but so does the man. It would be stupid to shoot in such a small space. But the man is old, and his hand is shaking, and Clint received news this morning that his and Bobbi’s house had sold so right now he’s kind of wishing the man will shoot. 

“Hawkeye,” a voice says behind him. “Put the gun down, Aron,” the voice says in Hungarian. “It’s only the assassin Hawkeye.” Aron rolls his eyes but slowly lowers the gun, and Clint turns his head to see Petyr Smithson. He’s a fifty-something Englishman who has lived anywhere but for the last thirty years, but he looks like a typical Englishman still: ruddy cheeks, blue eyes, fair hair, a general blandness that makes him blend into the crowd.

Petyr takes Clint’s arm and leads him away. Aron watches them go, and Clint assumes he’ll see the man sooner rather than later. “You aren’t who I expected to see here, Hawkeye,” Petyr says conversationally as they slip past the funeral director and into a hallway. “What business did you have with Henri Gagnon?”

“I’m looking for friends of his.”

“How interesting. I was trying to avoid his friends.”

“By coming to his funeral?”

“We won’t be interrupted in here,” Petyr says as he opens a door to a small room for grieving families. “And his truest friends aren’t here. Are you seeking information, Hawkeye?”

“Are you seeking a favor?” Petyr didn’t typically avail himself to spies but he always appreciated their favors. Which mostly meant not telling people where to find him at any given time.

“You know I will give you no false information.”

“Is it true Henri linked himself to HYDRA?”

“In theory. He mostly linked himself to a young, pretty blonde whose father is a high-ranking agent. She is no longer with her father, and so he is no longer linked to HYDRA.”

“Not the girl in there?”

“Yes. She had some quiet plastic surgery by an unqualified surgeon. I believe it was to discourage her father from trying to drag her home.”

Not interesting, and not the sort of information he needs. “Nikodem Dubiki,” he says after a pause because he doesn’t know where else to take this conversation. Taking down HYDRA buildings had been all they really accomplished. HYDRA was causing the deaths of multiple adults but it wasn’t the supersoldier serum as far as the sci-tech department can tell. It appears to be a combination of radiation and injections of mercury. Most people die immediately. What HYDRA is hoping to accomplish is murky as is any information on their plans. So it’s back to Dubiki and Clint hopes they can track an ally to HYDRA.

“Ah.” Petyr pulls a flask from his pocket and takes a swig. “Your Black Widow asked me this last week. Are you hunting the same people?”

“It’s more HYDRA is hunting us, and we hear Dubiki is a new ally.”

“I don’t envy your position, my friend. I will tell you what I told Widow. For the record, I don’t agree with Nikodem’s new alliances. HYDRA is only one of them. He’s thrown in his lot with some old Italian mob family in New York that doesn’t even have power anymore. And a Bolivian drug cartel— no one like what La Corporación was in its day. Some guerrilla groups, too, I didn’t bother with the groups’ names. A bunch of IRA bastards too. If you want to know who’s he allied himself with, that list is as long as your friend Mockingbird’s legs.” Clint smiles to himself; Petyr only met Bobbi once but she was wearing a miniskirt and it left a long-standing impression. Not that he can blame him. Bobbi’s legs are the seventh wonder of the world. “I will write down all the names I remember, as I did for Widow, but if you want to find them, I suggest looking for those who need the credibility of the Dubiki.”

“It still has credibility?” Clint asks. “It didn’t seem like that to me.”

“Well,” Petyr says carefully, “they are HYDRA allies now, so credibility may be a stretch. Allow me to rephrase. They have _power_ behind their name. And some will do anything to be connected to that power. Do you have a pen and paper?”

Clint hands him a pocket notebook and waits patiently while Petyr writes. Some are recognizable, like the new Ochoa Santos syndicate in Basque Country. Others Clint has never heard of, and it’s his job to hear of them. He hopes they are known to Interpol, the FBI, or the CIA. Other government agencies are harder to get information from. Not impossible—nothing is impossible when you’re willing to cheat, lie, and steal—but it definitely won’t make things go smoothly. And Clint really needs things to go smoothly. When they go smoothly, he doesn’t want to drink.

“What are they trying to do with the children?” he asks. “The Dubikis. They’re murdering children left and right.”

“If you’re looking into _that_ , no wonder they want you dead. But I know you, Hawkeye, you won’t stand by while children are in danger. I believe they are trying to recreate the Captain America serum, but it’s a very foolish endeavor. No one has ever come close.”

Except Bobbi, but Petyr doesn’t know that.

Petyr continues, “I’ve heard they managed some moderate success in the early days. But eventually the side effects showed. Bleeding from the eyes, sudden onset hemophilia, blindness, heart or lung failure, rashes, spiking fevers that kill overnight, severe mood swings, bones that break and won’t heal, hallucinations. Sometimes they stop being able to digest food. Some of them cry blood.”

“Why is Nikodem doing it? I can’t imagine the serum would be of any use to him.”

“No, it wouldn’t. For the glory of it, I must assume. Perhaps he just having fun playing around.”

“Do you think there’s any chance Nikodem intends to screw HYDRA over?”

Petyr meets his gaze. Out of the corner of Clint’s eye, he sees the flask tumble nervously between fingers. Everything Petyr will say now is—not a lie. An omission of the truth. An unreasonable guess when he can make a better. Not a _lie_ , Petyr would argue. But he doesn’t bother with trying to make guesses. Instead he says, “First Widow suggests Nikodem is intentionally mishandling the formula and now you suggest he plays games. Neither of you know Nikodem, and if you did you would know he would never be so foolish. He doesn’t have the power to stand against HYDRA. May I ask why you are both suggesting such things?”

“If he’s making the serum, he’s making questionable choices. There are too many known poisons in the breakdown, and if I understood the scientist correctly, too many potentially unstable combinations.”

Petyr takes another long drink from his flask. “If you’ll pardon me, Hawkeye, I might go talk some sense into my friend before he finds himself on the wrong end of your arrow. Or worse, on the other end of a HYDRA alliance.”

–

Aron’s goons, two forty something year old with beer bellies, thinning hair, and eighties-style suits, follow Clint out of the funeral home, so he stops by the closest boutique since the candy colored outside catches his attention. Clint figures now is as good of a time as any to get some belated Christmas presents, so he browses until he finds a cherry red enamel hairbrush decorated with blue and silver seashells for Jessica and a similar blue hairbrush with a bright gold handle for Maria. For Melinda, who’s stuck flying them around, he gets a green bracelet that curls around in the shape of a snake. For Bobbi’s mother, who sent him a Christmas present for the sole purpose of guilt tripping him into telling her why Bobbi wasn’t answering her calls, he got a gold-plated hair pin with enamel roses on it. If he sends it from here, he might even have a reasonable excuse as to why it didn’t reach her before Christmas. And then maybe she will stop leaving messages on his land line. (And maybe he should just stop listening to the messages altogether; the machine is meant solely for Bobbi’s parents and Barney, back when he still thought Barney was a civilian. None of them have anything to say to Adaline and George Morse).

Clint lingers over a bracelet made of resin seashells painted a soft white and outlined in the color of the ocean. Bobbi might like it. It’s hard to tell what she might like sometimes, admittedly. She’s never been the easiest person to buy presents for, and he hasn’t spoken to her in weeks. People couldn’t possibly change that much in a few months’ time. But who knows what else she might have decided she didn’t need anymore?

_Don’t be petty_ , he tells himself. _It’s not like you wouldn’t run away from yourself if you could. And she never_ needed _you_.

He picks up the bracelet before he can change his mind. A Christmas present isn’t a major thing. And they’re still married. Not legally separated, even.

Aron’s goons are still lingering, smoking cheap cigarettes by the parking lot. Clint thinks about other people he might be able to find presents for. Natasha. He’s going to mend fences, isn’t he? That’s what he decided last week. And the week before. And the week before that. Well, they’re in completely different places, so he can be forgiven for not making contact just yet. But he will. So he should probably get her something. He doesn’t know what. Normally he buys her weapons, and god knows that’s probably the last thing she needs. Eventually he unearths a resin jewelry box decorated a dragonfly. 

Aron’s goons are still there, but they’re looking distinctly bored and they’re running low on cigarettes—god he wants a cigarette—so he wastes time by going through the store all over again. This time he’s not as picky. SHIELD keeps a Christmas box in the cafeteria all throughout January, and he can just leave the trinkets in there for one of the staff or agents to pick out. It’s an easy way to boost morale in an agency compromised of people who never had a happy holiday in their lives. People leave small things in there, and anyone can come and take whatever strikes their fancy. So he picks out some small things: painted seashells, a few more hairbrushes, handmade nail polish, resin reindeer, tiny jewelry boxes. 

He’s still not losing Aron’s goons. He really does admire their dedication, annoying as it is, but he has zero idea who Aron is or what he wants and he isn’t prepared to deal with it right now. So he pays and leaves. The next store to catch his eye is a bakery. He buys bread and cookies and allows himself to get talked into buying a dozen caramel slices and a pavlova, which admittedly would go well with the stew he left on the stove top for Maria to eat as she worked. His faithful tails are still lingering so he goes into the next shop. It’s a beauty store, and he allows himself to be chattered to about different shades of red lipstick when he informs the consultant there he’s looking for a red lipstick for his girlfriend. Jessica had run out several days ago, and Clint admits to being fairly disturbed by how young she looks without it, so it’s only half a lie. For spies and assassins they’re the best kind of lies.

Aron’s goons disappear from his view in the window so he chooses two lipsticks, which as far as he can tell are pretty much identical, even though the consultant says they are totally different. He carefully walks out the door, watching on his right where the hired help was last. They aren’t too far away, but their backs are turned. Clint walks to the parking lot in as fast a pace as he can without looking suspicious and climbs into Barney’s idling car. “Leave quickly.”

Barney obeys without question, although maybe it’s just because two middle-aged men wearing suits they probably wore to their proms kind of stand out in the crowd. “What did you learn?” he asks. “And is that chocolate I smell?”

Clint doubts he can smell the chocolate but digs out a caramel slice and hands it over. “I’m not sure how useful the information is,” he admits. “But we have a list of names to work off of at least.” He pulls out the notebook and reads a few out loud. He doesn’t expect the IRA has anything to do with this—or that HYDRA would want to ally themselves with the IRA. The end game isn’t remotely the same, and he has very little idea on why Dubiki would ally himself with the IRA at all unless the IRA is hoping supersoldiers will make Britain cave into their demands. 

“Give me another of those things, and let me tell you what _I_ learned,” Barney says. “Nikodem Dubiki is dying. Kelley–Seegmiller syndrome. A disease you’re born with, they tell me. Causes gout and kidney stones. He’s not taking medicine, completely refused treatment, so he’s not likely to last much longer. He has a son with a much more terminal version of the disease, called Lesch–Nyhan syndrome. Something about uric acid and HPRT deficiency. There’s a report waiting for us back at the motel on what all that shit means, but my understanding is the kid likely won’t live to twenty. He’s already nine.”

And there’s Petyr’s lie.“What is gout again?” 

Barney shrugs. “Dunno. The English have it a lot. So don’t eat like them, I guess.”

“No one eats like the English anyway. Wait, there’s Petyr. Invite him in.”

Barney slides to a stop. Clint rolls down the window and says he has some more questions to ask. Petyr ‘climbs into the car, accepts a caramel slice, and waits for Clint’s question.

“I’ve recently learned Nikodem might die soon,” Clint says after a few moments of trying to phrase it right.

Petyr deflates. “He wouldn’t, you know, if he took his damn medicines.”

“Gout affects the… joints, doesn’t it?”

“I thought it had something to do with the stomach,” Barney says, even as he slides Clint a thought-you-didn’t-know look. Which Clint didn’t, not really. It just sounded like what he’d heard before. The only other body part that started with j that he could think of was jaw and that didn’t sound right at all.

Petyr straightens. Once upon a time, he’d been at Cambridge and received a degree in chemistry. He looks eager and ready to explain, so Clint doesn’t bother to tell him it’s really not that important. “To sum it up as easily and quickly as possible since we are nearing my hotel: Your body breaks purines into uric acid. Purines are also in meats and ales, which is why gout is so common in my home country. We do love our steak and kidney pie.” Clint carefully stares ahead and does not think of the one and only time he ate steak and kidney pie. “If your body produces too much uric acid and your kidneys fail to remove it, urate crystals form. They gather around the joints and cause a terrible pain.”

“And this…”

“Kelley–Seegmiller syndrome,” Barney supplies when Clint gestures to him.

“Causes gout?”

“Yes. Kidney stones, gout, hyperuricemia—high uric acid. Not fatal, not necessarily, but left untreated all those things are fatal.”

“And Nikodem’s son?”

Petyr sighs. “Poor Sebastian. He _will_ die, no matter what, and that will be kinder than living. LNS is not a pretty disease. Unlike Nikodem, he was born with it. LNS is not just gout and kidney stones. It’s also neurological impairments and cognitive disorders. He has never learned to walk, and he will never learn. I do not think he will last much longer. It appears he will go into renal failure before long.”

–

Bobbi is knee deep in a plate of broiled bananas topped with Peruvian chocolate and spiced almonds when Clint calls her. She stares down at his number with trepidation but answers anyway. It’s not like she’s doing anything else unless she counts avoiding Rebecca trying to feed her mussels. “Mockingbird,” he says. His tone is light but serious enough, and her shoulders lose some of their tension. It’s business. She can handle business. 

He launches into an explanation of what he learned. Bobbi halts him all of thirty seconds in. She hates when people give wrong information. “Kelley-Seegmiller isn’t likely to kill if it’s being treated. Lethe’s source was wrong about that, unless Nikodem has something else wrong with him.”

Clint makes a noise of acknowledgment.

“You also aren’t born with it. You can be, but its onset is usually later in life. Okay, now you can talk.”

As he fills her in, she abandons her plate of bananas and lays the reports she got from sci-tech this morning on the table. Her excitement is growing the longer he talks. Her doctorate adviser, Dr. Wilma Calvin, had been trying to recreate the supersoldier serum. She’d even tried to talk Bobbi into staying on with her after she graduated. Bobbi hadn’t wanted to, but she’d seen enough of Dr. Calvin’s research into the serum to know the report of the poison in the children’s systems wasn’t likely to ever work.

But as a potential cure for LNS… well, it still wasn’t likely to work if she thought about it. None of the murdered children had anything remotely resembling the disease. So what exactly was Nikodem Dubiki doing? The injections they had given the children were essentially a motley of poisons and unstable chemicals. Unless he were just throwing things into a vial and calling it a day, it made zero sense. The poisons were bound to kill the children sooner rather than later, and she doesn’t like the effects Petyr described. She supposes Dubiki could be trying to induce kidney failure so he can test something else but one wouldn’t think he was stupid enough to ally himself with HYDRA in that case. Foolishness isn’t the way he survived so long. To betray and lie to HYDRA like that would be a sentence worse than death.

Of course, watching his son live so horribly might also be a sentence worse than death.

“Birdie,” Clint says in that mildly amused way that means she’s off in her own world again, “you still there?”

“I’m trying to make sense of it.”

“Good luck with that. You can probably ask him yourself soon. I hear Interpol is closing in on him.”

“I’ve heard that rumor too. I assume the lack of dead children means he’s in hiding.”

“Petyr said he gave Widow a list of names. We’re running them through our systems. We’ll only take only those with HYDRA ties. I assume your team is taking the rest.”

“We haven’t gone through it yet. Send us the names you’re hunting and we’ll take the rest.”

When Clint hangs up, conversation mercifully and sadly over and much less painless than she thought it would be when she received confirmation their house was no longer theirs, Bobbi goes back to her plate of bananas and examines the reports with fresh eyes. Inducing kidney failure in someone isn’t particularly difficult. Multiple poisons could be used and they wouldn’t need to be in combination with anything else so she doubts that’s Dubiki’s ultimate plan. Besides kidney failure was only one thing to deal with. The neurological damage would likely be difficult to replicate and harder to cure, although she admits genetic diseases aren’t her forte.

It’s possible Dubiki doesn’t even have an ultimate plan at all—she’s met those sorts of criminals before, the ones who just want to cause destruction and murder at will usually out of misery and bitternes. But going through it with fresh eyes—She thinks he might be trying for the supersoldier serum after all. From what little they do know of it, it might be possible that he’s just trying foolish combinations and not attempting anything else. And if he makes the supersoldier serum correctly, it might save his son. 

Of course, he’s not making it himself. He has no science background. He has a master’s in business management, and he has legitimate money in textile operations and affordable clothing. But god knows the Dubiki family once had dozens of scientists on their payroll. Some of them would help, out of fear, out of misguided loyalty, or out of the desire to have their name attached to groundbreaking research. They should know better, she thinks, but then again you never really know what will work in science. 

–

While Vigtore and Natasha attempt to hunt a man they both know through the brothels of Dongguan, China and Rebecca makes it a mission of ordering every French seafood dish off the hotel menu, Bobbi sinks into her one-time mentor’s research. Dr. Calvin’s research is well-documented but she wishes she had her own copy of it, with all the notes she made as a post-grad. 

“Do you really think Dubiki would expend so much effort to save his son?” Rebecca asks. “I’m not convinced he’s the type—we know he’s okay with murdering children. Usually those types don’t save their own children either.”

Bobbi made a noise of agreement before the comment even registers. “But Sebastian Dubiki is unlucky. It doesn’t matter that Nikodem has the same disease as his son. It’s an X-linked recessive disease. He got it from his mother. Nikodem has a lot of scientists working for him. Someone may have informed him of that, but if they haven’t, he might blame himself. If there are no heirs, this crime family dies with him.”

“So they go the way of the mob, who cares?” Rebecca says as if they both haven’t met dozens of men who killed and tortured to make sure that very thing didn’t happen. 

“I wouldn’t mind, you know that, but the Dubiki family is old and respected. Why would they want that?”

“Why wouldn’t they? They’re scattered and penniless, remember? Most of them are dead and in jail. Nikodem would be wise to let it die before they go too much further down the drain.”

Bobbi frowns at her copy of Dr. Calvin’s research. “This has been changed.”

Rebecca abandons her bowl of fish soup that is not bouillabaisse and comes to sit next to Bobbi. “What’s changed?”

“This entire section has been rewritten to include combinations that didn’t work. She swore she would never published those. She said it would be too easy someone else to find out the formula before she did.”

“What happened to sharing in science?”

“The supersoldier serum isn’t likely to save anyone’s life.”

“It saved Steve Rogers’ life, didn’t it? He had all those health problems. Technically the serum fixed him.”

“And we still don’t know what long-term effects might have cropped up. He wasn’t alive long enough.” 

“I’m aware. You bring it up constantly.”

“People keep forgetting.”

“We don’t. It’s just no fun to think of the problems.”

“Let me see if I can get a number for Dr. Calvin.”

Ten minutes later, Rebecca has ordered a pot of onion soup for them and Bobbi has Dr. Calvin’s most recent number. They didn’t part on the best of terms so Bobbi is rubbing her palms against her thighs nervously as the phone rings.

“Wilma Calvin.”

“Hi, Dr. Calvin. It’s, um, it’s Bobbi Morse.”

It always amazes her how loud silences can be. This one feels like she’s sixteen again and shyly telling Dr. Calvin about the boy in one of her classes. _He’s not a boy_ , her mentor said. And Bobbi said, _Of course he’s a boy. He’s a boy in my class. Weren’t you listening?_ And Dr. Calvin’s silence had been long and heavy. Bobbi hadn’t understood the weight of the silence then. _He’s eighteen_ , Dr. Calvin stated finally. _And you’re barely sixteen. He’s not a boy. He’s an adult and you are still a child, Miss Morse._ And Bobbi’s response, _He’s a boy, and you can’t stop us._ And there had been another silence, heavier and longer than the last. 

Bobbi wished for years afterward she had heeded her mentor. It was too late for regrets, though, and too late to warn the child she’d been about the sort of men that liked impressionable, younger girls. 

“Bobbi,” Dr. Calvin says finally. “It’s so nice to hear from you.”

Bobbi doubts that. Their last conversation had been more or less an argument albeit one where no voices were raised and no one was really trying to persuade the other. Bobbi wanted to work for SHIELD. Dr. Calvin wanted her to stay and become a professor. They hadn’t tried to tell each other why they wanted that outcome. And then Bobbi left, said she’d keep in touch, and never had.

“It’s nice to talk to you too,” she says awkwardly as if she isn’t trained in a million ways to speak to contacts. “How have you been? Your son?”

Rebecca turns off the television and sits up on the couch as if Bobbi is now her entertainment. Bobbi gives her the finger as she listens. “I just retired actually,” Wilma says.

“I heard,” Bobbi lies.

“I assumed you wouldn’t have called otherwise.”

More heavy silence.

“Your son?”

“Flew the coop years ago. Barely has time for his mother.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“He lives out in Florida now. There are girls in bikinis. What does he need me for? And you, Dr. Morse?”

“It’s Barton now. Well, Morse-Barton. I’m only Morse at work since my husband is also at SHIELD,” she reveals. She usually tries not to say these things over the phone while on missions since her cell phone isn’t as encrypted but she doesn’t know what else to do but answer the questions.

“Is your husband sci-tech too?”

Sometimes Bobbi wonders how Dr. Calvin knew, even years ago, the names of their departments. Maybe they were just easy to guess. Only the agency name was complex. “No. He’s a sniper,” she adds just to see what she’ll say.

Wilma only laughs. “Good lord, Barbara Roberta, what were you thinking?”

Bobbi feels her shoulders start to relax, a rare occurrence at the sound of her full name. Wilma was always easy to talk to, always willing to be confidant, mentor, and therapist. “I was thinking he thought I was wonderful and brilliant and beautiful.”

“Another older man then?”

“Younger, actually. By four years. I know, I was surprised too. But—you know what it’s like being a woman in a lab full of men. Especially a woman men think is pretty. I’ve done good work but there’s always someone. I guess it turned my head that he never doubted me.”

“Tell me about him,” Wilma says. And Bobbi does. She chatters for fifteen minutes straight. The memories she shares are happy ones—an anniversary where they spent a week in a private villa on St. Barts; a night out at a new, trendy restaurant where they were somehow mistaken for food critics since Clint had that sort of face; a surprise trip to Aspen for Christmas one year because Bobbi idly wondered once what it would be like to ski; a surprise trip to Germany for Clint’s twenty-fifth birthday—which was difficult to wrangle since they both were running low on available time off—to see the museums for the Audi, the Mercedes, and the Porsche, all of which for some reason had their own museums.

Bobbi tells Wilma only the surface level but she relives them as she talks. They really only saw the inside of their breathtakingly luxurious villa is St. Barts. Because they’d both been so busy and Clint had been so stressed after a mission gone bad, they hadn’t spent any time together in weeks before. She’d been worried about his nightmares, but he only had one the first night. Afterward, he seemed content, happy even, lounging about the villa and making love to her in every room. 

Being mistaken for food critics was hilarious at the time, especially since they hadn’t enjoyed the food. Overcooked and bland, the victim of too many people eating and not enough people cooking, and later she heard they were unprepared and understocked. 

She was terrible at skiing, so they’d given up on day three after a multitude of bruises and a sprained ankle and spent the rest of the time just exploring hand in hand. 

The museums had been fun, surprisingly, although after a while all the cars started to look the same but Clint was interested, and he isn’t always easy to interest.

There had been good times, which she had forgotten, hadn’t thought about in years. It had been a while since they just relaxed and had fun and maybe that was the problem. Usually they took a vacation every year. They hadn’t in the last couple, not since Natasha came into SHIELD. Maybe that was all they needed—all Clint needed—was the chance to take a deep breath away from everything. Maybe that would have solved something.

She doubts it though. Chances are it would have pushed the despair down deeper.

–

Natasha likes nothing less than searching brothels, but at least today proved fruitful. Holding on tightly to the arm of the Tiger, as he likes to think of himself, she practically drags him into the hotel elevator. Vigtore lags behind them a little bit, looking mostly amused and a little bit tired. He’s lost weight since he joined them but he’s not in the best of shape still. When the elevator doors close, he slumps over and says, “I’m too old and bent out of shape for these missions.”

“I don’t know, that blonde in the pink lingerie didn’t think so,” the Tiger says. His toupee, which is the literally made to look like tiger strips, is off center. Natasha thinks about fixing it since it’s bothering her a little but he’s about a foot and a half taller than her and she doesn’t feel like stretching herself. And if she does, she might just rip the ugly thing off his head. 

“Of course she did. I had money. No woman really likes my face anymore,” Vigtore says, gesturing to his scars.

Natasha almost says, “Rebecca does,” but she knows by now the two of them will deny it. They don’t know Bobbi and Natasha caught them kissing two days ago, and they don’t know they’ve been seen sneaking around like naughty schoolchildren. So she doesn’t feel the need to enlighten them. Besides, someone else could be miserable about their relationship. Bobbi seems to be just fine without Clint, but Natasha can feel Laila slipping away from her the longer she’s away. They’ve only spoken three times this month, and one of those conversations was a whole three minutes long. At this point, she thinks it might be best to break up, except it’s hardly a break up if you don’t ever see each other, is it? Not that she has a lot of experience. Her relationships ended with death or imprisonment so she was a little outside her comfort zone. Should she just stop calling?

The Tiger—real name is Elmer Duce so Natasha will forgive him the terrible, untrue nickname; Elmer might be a zebra if he’s lucky—is chatting about hot blondes again. It’s easier to join in the conversation than think of Laila, so Natasha murmurs an appreciation of the brunette with nipple rings and listens with one ear as she watches the numbers tick by.

Inside the hotel room, Bobbi is on the phone to someone who is definitely not happy. Rebecca walks over, takes the Tiger’s arm, and sits him down in front of the room service menu. While he decides, she comes back over to them. “Mockingbird’s on the phone with her PhD adviser. Her research was recently altered. The information is correct. The approval is missing. I checked with the university. No one’s admitting to authorizing an alteration of Dr. Calvin’s published papers.”

“She studied the supersoldier serum, did she not?” Vigtore asks. “I don’t like the coincidence.”

“More than that, right after you left, we learned sci-tech managed to break down the components of the poison used in the children. It’s not entirely the same. There are some minor alterations in each group. Shortly thereafter, Hawkeye called to tell us Nikodem Dubiki’s son is dying from a genetic disease. It might explain why he’s suddenly interested in the serum. We have a ten year old interview where he said he thought the obsession was supersoldiers was ridiculous.”

Natasha takes a deep breath and tries to calm the racing of her heart. She hadn’t heard the name Hawkeye in weeks—she thinks Rebecca and Vigtore might be intentionally avoiding any reference to him for her sake and Bobbi’s. “He wants to save his son.”

“The last of his line. I guess he doesn’t want to go out flailing like the mob. It would be easier for me though,” Rebecca adds. “I haven’t told Bobbi yet but I’m retiring at the end of the year.”

“To be with Vigtore?” Natasha asks before she can stop herself.

Both of them turn to look at her. They’re not glaring, not exactly, but they’re not happy. “I guess making out half naked on the balcony the other day was a one time thing then,” she says cheerfully. “Tiger, have you decided on food?”

“I have,” he calls back.

Natasha goes to order it just as Bobbi hangs up her cell. “What did you do to them?” Bobbi whispers as Natasha dials the number for room service.

“They don’t like being called out as horny teenagers.”

Bobbi attempts to looking disapproving but the corners of her mouth turn up. “We said we weren’t going to say anything.”

“Rebecca just said she’s retiring.”

“What?”

Her call is connected. She points to Rebecca, mouths “ask her,” and orders.

–

“Rebecca is unhappy with you,” Vigtore says.

Natasha only stretches her toes out. “And my feet are unhappy with me. Is my blister bleeding? I can’t tell anymore.”

He settles next to her on the balcony and steals one of her croquembouche. “I’m sorry it was a wasted mission.”

The Tiger, who usually knew everything—the gossip central station of the underworld in a way—knew nothing they didn’t. She can’t figure out if they already have all the information and just aren’t putting it together right—if Dubiki and HYDRA is trying to make the supersoldier serum work, why are they killing the children just because SHIELD is coming; they must know leaving the bodies behind is a bad idea—or if the information they need to make sense of it is just not known by anyone but the major players. “Remind me never to wear heels in a place with dozens of brothels.”

Of course it took all day, and of course the Tiger was in the last place they looked for him, and of course Natasha had been mistaken for a prostitute a few times, although not as many as she expected due to her severe business suit.

“Why don’t you want to be with Rebecca?” she asks when he says nothing in response.

“No one loves a monster.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“That’s not what children say.”

“I don’t think five year olds can be counted to have a good grasp on monsters.”

“I killed people.”

“I killed more, I’m sure. And people love me,” she says. And whatever gods there may be help her because that’s somehow a true statement. “You served your country. I served a rogue once-government-funded experiment that served to torture little girls in the name of an ever-changing country.”

“Soldiers serve their country.”

“So do spies and assassins.”

“In different ways.”

“Do we? Soldiers kill. Sometimes when they shouldn’t. I’d argue soldiers are worse. They learn to take orders mindlessly. We don’t.”

“Don’t we?”

“Fury doesn’t as for mindlessness.”

Vigtore ignores that and chooses instead to poke at a canelé curiously. “Why all the French food?”

“A specialty of the hotel. And Rebecca’s been ordering French food the entire time we’ve been here, so I guess we’ve all been keeping with the theme. But don’t think you’re off the hook so easily. Rebecca’s killed too.”

“Yes.”

She tries a different tact. “I have a girlfriend in HR. Laila. I miss her. So much. Even though I barely started dating her before I went away again.”

“This is why spies don’t marry.”

“Bobbi and Clint did.”

“A rare occurrence. And I understand they are having difficulties.”

“Clint’s… unstable. A danger to himself.”

“I remember him. I retired shortly after he came on board. He was… broken. I thought nothing could ever fix him. I suppose I thought Dr. Morse would. But no one can fix someone else. That has to come from within. And these days, I think it might be the hardest thing to do.”

Natasha wouldn’t know. Her pieces are missing and putting them together seems too difficult. So she leaves them be. It’s enough to know she has been violated in every which way a human being can be. She doesn’t have to dwell on it. “I was in love with her.” When he looks to her in confusion, she says, “Yelena. The Widow who gave you those scars. You described her so well. Feral. Sometimes I think Yelena must have been a psychopath. She cared so little about anything, even me. And I knew that on some level. She didn’t actually love me—she was implanted to love me, a little reward—but I think I knew that she didn’t. She liked to hurt people. She liked to make the other girls cry. She would bully children in the streets and laugh when they cried. She probably did worse, but that’s all I can remember. There are gaps in my memory. They probably knew I genuinely loved her.” Vigtore says nothing, so she continues, “Maybe psychopath is too mild a word. She was a monster. She would do anything as long as someone was hurt over it. And I loved her because I was a monster too.”

“You’re not very good at this,” he says lightly. “Too blunt.”

“Life’s too short to play games. Why did you and Rebecca break up?”

He touches his drooping mouth. Natasha has become accustomed to it in recent weeks and barely registers it anymore but now she studies it intently. It could be worse. “Clearly you can still kiss.”

To her surprise, he blushes. “Rebecca was so awkward around me at first,” he admits. “It happened… oh, twenty years ago. I was handsome back then. Director Carter gave me the codename Apollo when I first came on. I thought—the arrogance of youth—I thought I would always handsome. I’ve seen horrible things, dealt with horrible people, been in war zones and caught in bombs—but somehow my looks remained mostly intact. And somehow, I thought the worst mission I ever worked was tracking down your Yelena.”

“She escaped.”

“Indeed. Meanwhile I am lucky I can still see out of both eyes. I didn’t consider myself lucky at the time. I was ashamed at being disfigured, so I left Rebecca and transferred away from New York for a while. I learnt how to be a handler. But New York was the city of my heart, so I came back until retirement. And Rebecca seemed to have moved on. And I had too, as well, or at least I thought I did.”

“She’s never mentioned retiring before. Maybe she’s regretting the past.”

God knows Natasha did. The mere thought of being in love with Yelena makes her skin crawl. Thoughts of Laila make her feel warm and fuzzy, like she’s being wrapped a cozy blanket next to a fireplace. Comforting. Yelena had been raw power, and Lucya innocence, and James… James was an equal who was never really hers.

“What are you supposed to look for in relationships anyway?” she asks.

“Someone to come home to.”


	7. if you wanna talk baby use your hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... so apparently I lied when I said I knew where this was going. But thanks for all the support so far! Parts of this feel choppy to me, and I am beginning to realize I can't really write Black Widow.
> 
> This chapter, in Clint's POV, contains Russian (probably badly) translated with Google Translate. Hopefully the translations aren't obtrusive. And also hopefully they're not hideously incorrect.

2005

Jessica hits the ground hard on her left side. Breathless and certain she has broken her ribs, she stumbles to her knees and crawls behind the fallen desk. “This was a bad idea,” she says into her comm. “Who gets into a fight in the middle of an office building?”

“ _This_ wasn’t my idea,” Barney says irritably. She doesn’t know where he is but she can distantly hear an echo, so he must be on the same floor as she is for her to be able to hear him.

“Technically it was,” she mutters resentfully. 

“ _You_ screwed it up, Jess.”

She kicks off her shoes, throwing one of them at the head of an oncoming attacker. The Eternal Stars are not a terrifying group but they do have links to HYDRA and Barney was right, checking out their legitimate business was a good idea. She just wasn’t cut out for going undercover clearly; she’d given them away too quickly. And now she was dodging bullets in an eight by eight foot room on the tenth floor of a building. She can hear police sirens coming ever closer and people shouting the streets. There’s a barricade on the sidewalk, cutting off the block from the rest of the street. Some cops on bikes were already there, shattering the front glass of the window because the building was locked down. 

As long as the fight remained on this floor, everyone else who was unfortunate enough to rent business space in the same place was safe. Which is why Jessica didn’t climb out the window and jump to the ground. She wasn’t supposed to put civilians in danger. Not that it mattered. Everyone is the immediate vicinity had been evacuated and there was no one in the space between buildings. 

Jessica had so far avoided using her powers in case anyone her recognized them but her gun was out of bullets and she was essentially trapped between desks. She took a deep, centering breath and pushed outward with hands. The desks went flying. The men shooting assault rifles at her went flying too, crashing in the walls, the guns going off in the fray. Then for a moment, total silence in the immediate area.

On the street, there’s more shouting, sirens closing in, people exclaiming in shock or fear or excitement. She can hear people trying to get away from the floors above and below them. Feet clattering down stairs, urgent shouts, whimpers of fear. No elevators—they have it open on this floor—but people climbing down fire escapes and running up the roof, where there’s a glass overpass that connects it to a similar building next door. 

Finally noise starts up close by again. People run into the room she’s in. More men, more guns, but not as many as when they first started. Behind them, she can see Barney’s shock of red hair. He’s abandoned his gun too and she watches for a beat as he flicks a knife between his fingers and slits the throat of one of the men in the back. 

Jessica throws her hands up again and the first few rows of men skitter into the walls and crash into each other. The noise is overwhelming almost, as the sirens stop on the street below them and a team of officers crash into the building, helping people out and running up the steps in heavy gear to get to this floor. Jessica sends another blast from her hands and takes out a few more rows; behind the last few rows, Barney has slit eight throats already with a quick, agile ease.

She sends one last blast just as a team of heavily armed officers in black armor burst in.

–

“Your name, lady?” A police officer asks again. His voice isn’t nice but Jessica is used to not nice. She lifts her head and forces herself to refocus on the man. She’d been trying to hear through the soundproofed walls for Barney and she’d managed it, just barely, just enough to know he had thrown his FBI badge on the table between him and his interrogating officer. So she’s not particularly concerned.

“Jessica Drew,” she responds. Her voice is slurring a little. Jet lag and a fight had left her feeling completely drained. She wanted so badly to put her head down and rest. She knew she wouldn’t be allowed to here. 

“What were you doing there?”

“I’m a consultant to the FBI and SHIELD,” she says. The officer’s face contorts, maybe in disgust or disbelief, right when someone opens the door and gestures to him. As they leave, she focuses her attention through the walls and listens. They are calling the local FBI office. They’ll have to call SHIELD too, since she claimed them. They can’t interrogate federal agents. Well, they can, but it’ll be a headache. SHIELD can get them fired from their jobs and blacklisted if they really wanted to. The NYPD can’t afford it.

So the officer doesn’t come back. Another officer, uniformed this time, comes by to give Jessica a cup of overly sweet but otherwise weak coffee. Ordinarily she wouldn’t drink it but she needs something to perk her up so she does this time, sipping it carefully while wishing for a Coke.

She finishes the cup, takes stock of her injuries. She touches her ribs until she finds a spot that’s so painful her vision blackens at the corners. Broken ribs. A sprained ankle, because she was dressed professionally in heels she wasn’t used to. A bruise on her shoulder where she accidentally rammed herself into the corner of a desk, and she might have pulled the muscle too but it’s not too painful when she stretches it out. Battered feet since no one recovered her shoes. Mild aches and pains, better than Clint, who got entangled in a bar fight somewhere in Vancouver with a contact. He was recovering at the base ahead of today’s meeting with a fractured skull and bleeding ears, which everyone had been so worried about they forgot Jessica was in the room. She now knows Clint has hearing loss in both ears and she knows no one wanted to tell her because it’s a potential weakness to exploit and she’s not really on anyone’s side. But she keeps it close to her chest, feeling awkward and sorry, and last night, she’d bought a book on basic sign language at the resale shop around the corner from the motel she and Barney were staying at. (Well, she wanted to stay there, not wanting to feel like a prisoner at SHIELD if she didn’t have to be. She couldn’t stay there alone, and Barney had been nice enough to agree. He’d taken her out of a burger and milkshake and he hadn’t said anything about the weird books she used to hide the fact she was buying a sign language book).

When another fifteen minutes or so passes without anyone coming back, she lays her head down on her arms and dozes off. The soundproofed walls mean she can’t hear much without focusing, so although she doesn’t truly fall asleep, it’s peaceful until Deputy Director McKay enters the room with a police officer and the things they took from her in a plastic bag. “Come along, dear,” he says gently. She’s still drowsy so she takes the arm he offers her. 

“We didn’t have time to get anything,” she tells him.

“We have some agents going through,” he reassures her. “Agent Barney Barton was picked up so he could properly give a report and be taken to the hospital. Are you injured as well?”

“I think I broke a couple of ribs.”

“I’ll take you to SHIELD then. Agent Barton—Clint—can take you back when he leaves.”

“Is he out of medical? I thought they were worried about his head. And not in the way that made you send him out with me.”

“His skull fracture won’t require surgery. He was given a dose of Demerol to get him through the night and a week’s worth of prescription dosage ibuprofen. He appears to be fine this morning. Already complaining about being in medical.”

“And his ears?” McKay gives her a look. She doesn’t bother trying to dissemble. “Is there anymore hearing loss?”

“No,” he says. “I suppose you overheard that last night. No, the hearing aids he wears on missions aren’t meant to be in that long. It’s happened before. Skull fractures also cause bleeding from the ears so it looked worse than it was.”

“That’s good,” she says. “Will medical let me sleep?”

–

Laila’s hair is dip-dyed magenta when Natasha returns to New York. Natasha barely has time to register it before Laila throws her arms around her. Relieved, Natasha clutches her tightly back. She’d been convinced Laila had moved on. 

They have an hour and a half before the meeting and she intends to make the most of it. She bought a loaf of fresh bread and some artisan cheese and spent too much on money on a pot of vegetable barley soup and stuffed chicken. It’s all laid out on her dining room table waiting for Laila to stop hugging her. Except she doesn’t want the hug to end anytime in the near future.

It does, eventually, and they settle at the table to eat. Laila tells her about her two weeks with her sister in Sweden for Christmas (not really fun at all) and shows off her sunburn because she hadn’t realized she could get burned in the snow. Natasha can’t share much of her mission, mostly because it was a string of unnecessary fights and disjointed information but also because missions are dreary, miserable things and not really nice lunch conversations. But she does show Laila pictures of the Christmas decorations the hotel is Cebu City put up and a video of Rebecca wearing a Santa hat while chasing a man through Chhapra. 

When the food is finished, sadly without wine, Natasha gives her the Christmas present she bought somewhere in Luanda on a layover. It was a diamond and steel hairpin shaped like one of the constellations—Natasha didn’t remember which one but Laila once mentioned she wanted to be an astronomer when she was younger. 

Laila exclaims over the present and pins it in her hair immediately which Natasha is pleased by because she wasn’t convinced it would be well-received. Judging by Laila’s shyness as she pulls a much better wrapped present from her handbag, it seems she’s having the same problem. So maybe it’s just a new relationship thing and not Natasha’s inability to live a normal life.

She carefully peels back the wrapping paper—actual wrapping paper decorated with nutcrackers, not the brown parchment Natasha used at the safe house because that was all she could find—and set aside the top of the box. Inside is a music box with a ballerina with a shimmery blue tutu in arabesque penchée with music from Prokofiev’s Cinderella. It was one of the few ballets Natasha doesn’t remember dancing to and thus has no bad memories of. The music is a balm to her soul that she didn’t know she needed, and she blinks back the tears that well up. Laila touches her hand and without thinking Natasha throws her arms around her again and kisses her desperately. “This is the best thing anyone ever gave me,” she says in between kisses.

Laila laughs sweetly and pets her hair as she clutches onto her. “I was terrified it’d bring back bad memories. I was going to get tickets to the ballet too, they’re doing it next month, but I wasn’t sure you’d be here.”

Natasha probably wouldn’t, which is a bit heartbreaking, and Vigtore might be right, spies shouldn’t marry. Not that she has plans to marry Laila, but not knowing when she’d next see her is disheartening. She can’t even talk to her everyday, and she doesn’t even know if she’ll be back alive. She’s good, Natasha know she’s the best, but that doesn’t mean much. Clint managed to get the best of her in order to bring her in, and who knows what might happen if she ever runs into James—into the Winter Soldier—again. “I doubt I will be,” she says, “but you should go. It’s magical.”

“I might,” Laila agrees. “The woman who sells them talked my ear off about it so much though I feel like I already did see it.”

“Ballet fans are enthusiastic.” Natasha had been enthusiastic too once. That excitement was tempered with the knowledge everything was a lie. She supposes it’s about time she learns to like things on their own accord. Ballet is beautiful and stunning. If it’s also part of a landscape filled with bad memories, well, her entire life is. It hasn’t blown up in her face yet. “Give me the date,” she says impulsively. “Maybe I’ll see if I can swing it.”

–

Natasha knocks on Fury’s open door, distinctly aware her lips are swollen from kissing Laila. It takes her a second to realize there’s a conversation going on, and it takes another second to recognize Clint’s voice which she hadn’t heard in months. Part of her is annoyed at how easily he’s walked away from her and part of her wonders what she expects because it’s not like they have a history of being great friends. Reluctant allies, certainly. Two people forged from similar enough fires that they seemed to understand each other without question, definitely. Friends? That was a little tougher to believe. Or maybe it was just hard to handle. When was the last time she had a friend before him?

“Romanoff,” Fury greets. “Barton was just leaving.”

Clint rises, looking worn out and tired. In his hand is one of their mobile devices but his fingers are barely holding onto it. She knows he spent last night in medical and assumes since he’s out and about it wasn’t too bad. Although Clint could be bleeding out and he probably still wouldn’t want to be in medical where people expected him to stay still. Natasha is just starting to realize that staying still is a problem for him because he doesn’t like being alone with his thoughts.

Natasha doesn’t like being alone with hers either. 

“I have a Christmas present for you,” he says as he brushes past her. He smells smoky and looks even more gray and exhausted up close. But then he’s gone, so Natasha walks into Fury’s office and takes the chair Clint vacated.

“I’m surprised to see him being calm around you,” she says.

“I could say the same,” Fury retorts. “He even bought you a present. I didn’t get one.”

“What did he want?”

“Information above his clearance. What do _you_ want?”

“Time off.”

She gives him the bare minimum of information because she knows he doesn’t actually care for the details. “Fine,” he agrees. “You three are due time off anyway. I can give you a week if you don’t get captured or killed.”

Cheerful, she thinks. But she thanks him and heads down to the conference room where Clint is sitting on the opposite end of the table from Bobbi, who’s sitting far away from Rebecca, who’s sitting away from Vigtore just in case anyone has any nosy questions the way Natasha did. She takes stock of this drama straight out of a high school movie and plops herself down next to Clint, which seems as close as possible to not taking sides. “So I hear I have a Christmas present?” she says brightly.

Clint doesn’t bother to roll his eyes at that and instead reaches into the bag at his feet and hands her the resin box. It’s the perfect size to hold extra Widow Bites and even small vials of poison. This may not have been what he intended it for, but she is already mentally filling it.

Fury and McKay arrive to start the meeting. Information is compiled and handed out and everyone gets handed new cities to search and new people to chase. Except for Clint since his mission is technically different even though it intersects with theirs.

It takes three hours and by the end, Natasha feels moderately overwhelmed with information. Still trying to process the seemingly disconnected information, she floats out the door with the resin box in her hand. Clint stops her with a hand to her shoulder, and she turns to face him. “Are we speaking again?”

He shrugs and hands her a long rectangular box. “Give this to Bobbi for me, will ya?”

“Why does _her_ present get a box?”

“Yours was already a box.”

“You could have wrapped it.”

“I bought it two weeks after Christmas. I didn’t see the point.”

“So we are talking again?”

“Why do you think I’m an addict?”

“Why do you think you’re not?”

Clint rubs his wrist. There’s no injury there she can see and she wonders what he’s thinking. “Whatever,” he says. “Just give it to Bobbi, please. And don’t tell me if she doesn’t want it.”

“I _am_ sorry, you know,” she says as he starts down the hall. “I didn’t want to do it but—you’re a mess. I was trying to help. I miss you. You’re my best friend. And I’m yours.”

“You’re my only friend, tsarina.”

This is forgiveness, she thinks. As close as if they’ve ever come to admitting it. “So… I could eat again.”

He shrugs again, slings the bag over his shoulder. “What the hell, Jessica isn’t waking up anytime soon.”

–

Bobbi leaves the present Clint buys her on the vanity of her base apartment for two days. In an hour she will be on a plane to Ottawa and she thinks she ought to at least see what the present is before she leaves. He’s already gone so she can’t thank him in person. It might have been what she wanted if she paused to examine her reasoning but luckily she wasn’t inclined to do that nor did she have the time. She repacked her luggage and double checked her weapons, clipped her batons in her hair, and clasped on a watch she bought for three times its worth last week when she realized she’d broken hers.

The box is cheap and unassuming, and the present inside is almost certainly a bracelet but also possibly a knife, which she would prefer but doubts as Clint barely ever buys her weapons. As unobtrusive as the box seems, it’s taunting her. It’s a reminder Clint loves her, still thinks about her. It’s a reminder she bought him a present too, an original Russian version of _The Master and Margarita_ which he always meant to read but never has.

When she’s fully packed and has nothing to do but waste time she finally picks up the box before she can change her mind. Fingers hovering over the lid, she wonders if she should file for divorce or legal separation. Then she wonders if she even wants to. She can’t fathom not being married to Clint. He’s a huge part of her, a huge part of her life, and here in a tiny base apartment she has never missed him more. On missions it’s easy to forget. She doesn’t work with him often enough to be used to having him around. But now she misses him and their home and thinks maybe she ought to request couples’ therapy before she leaves.

She opens the box without really registering it. Nestled inside over white tissue paper is a bracelet. Softly feminine but not ostentatious. She admits to herself she likes it and slips it on her wrist. There’s no harm in wearing it, after all, she tells herself. She takes her luggage to the airstrip and Jimmy, a former RAF pilot who former Director Carter swayed into working for her, helps her load it onto the plane. This is Jimmy’s last flight with SHIELD—he’ll stay in Ottawa with his daughter and her family. Bobbi’s never flown with him before and has maybe met him twice so she hadn’t brought him a present like other agents he’d worked with had, but McKay mentioned the man had a vicious sweet tooth so she brought a brownie topped with ganache and Oreos for him. And one for herself too but that had been last night’s dinner. She offers him the brownie and he smiles widely, thanks her, and goes about enjoying it. 

When they are all safely tucked into the plane and awaiting takeoff, Natasha reaches over and takes her wrist. “You’re wearing it.”

“Should I not be?”

“I didn’t expect you to. _He_ didn’t expect you to. He didn’t think you’d even take it.”

Is this what her marriage is reduced to? No one’s even willing to say her spouse’s name around her? “Why wouldn’t I accept a present from my husband?”

“Well, you’re not much of a wife.”

“He wasn’t much of a husband,” Bobbi says defensively.

Natasha holds her hands up. “That came out wrong. I wasn’t judging. Maybe I should have said, you don’t have much of a marriage right now.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“I wasn’t saying it was.” Natasha throws a desperate glance at Rebecca and Vigtore who are watching with interest. “I—he seemed sober.”

“So?”

“Didn’t you want to talk to him? You ran out of the meeting and avoided him in the hallways.”

“Should I have wanted to talk to him?”

“It’s been months.”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“He—how do you _know_ if you don’t talk to him?”

“I think you’re going about this wrong, Agent Romanoff,” Jimmy says from the cockpit. “Dr. Morse, I think she’s trying to say it’s strange you’d accept a present from your estranged husband when you haven’t made an effort to see where your problems are currently standing. If he’s sober now, do you want to fix it? It’s up to you to make the first move, I’d say, since you’re the one who walked out.”

“Does everyone know everything about our—break up?”

“No, not everything. Just enough.”

“I could have eaten that brownie, you know.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It was amazing.”

–

Bobbi’s contact fails to show up the predetermined time and place and isn’t answering the number she has for him. She considers this a good enough reason to have a drink. She orders a martini and kicks back in her seat to people watch. It’s Saturday night, and most of the women here are more dressed up than she is, so she’s moderately surprised that a man at the bar is making eyes at her. He doesn’t give off any serial killer vibes, so she assumes he’s just a normal man relaxing from a taxing workweek. Of course he’s wearing a suit but some men wear them all the time. She wouldn’t want to date him, but if he wants sex, Bobbi’s willing. She’s tired of turning over the conversation about whether or not to talk to Clint in her head. She isn’t prepared. She misses him, she’ll admit that, but trying to discuss if he’s prepared to handle his addictions and emotional instability in a proper way is too much for her right now. Also, she knows from experience the “proper way” to handle mental problems isn’t always one that works. Should she push him? Should she take him back on faith—it was rare he broke promises to her, after all, and he promised he’d make it.

Bobbi doesn’t care right now. The blond man in his navy blue suit is making eyes at her, and she wants something that she doesn’t have to think about. She’s also not interested in being coy. She picks up her martini and walks over to him. “Are you just going to make eyes at me all night?”

He looks taken aback for a millisecond. She admires how quickly his expression evens out. “I was waiting for you to finish your drink so I could buy you another one.”

She downs her martini and smiles at him. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

He’s drinking a White Russian, and Natasha will be hideously amused if Bobbi tells her.

His name is Andrew and he works at a financial firm she recognizes the name of. He self-consciously smooths his tie and admits he went into work today so he could get ahead of someone he’s trying to beat for a promotion. Bobbi tells him she’s a biologist at a government-funded lab on vacation. In case her contact does bother to show up, she admits she’s supposed to meet an old friend who’s a bit flaky and hasn’t shown up.

(Flaky sounds normal. Flaky sounds better than emotionally unstable whiny brat who unfortunately inherited millions of dollars and a crime syndicate he doesn’t know how to run. That sort of comment makes men flee before her, and tonight she doesn’t want that.)

After the White Russian, they have a sidecar and then a version of the Brazilian caipirinha. Bobbi cuts herself off while she’s still pleasantly tipsy, so Andrew does too. He takes her to a nice hotel a few blocks over, a little fancy but not too much and pays for a night right off the bat. They must look respectable enough that the respectable hotel doesn’t turn them away even though it must be fairly clear what they’re doing, since they arrived without luggage.

Andrew makes small talk and she lets him for a while. He’s Ottawa born and raised and he offers a few fun things to do and places to go. When she feels he’s talked long enough, she peels off her shirt. Admirably, he shuts up. 

Afterward, when he falls asleep, she creeps into the shower. Her hair is a tangled mess, and there’s not much she can do about it without a brush but she scrubs it clean with the thin, complimentary shampoo and combs it through with her fingers. She idly wishes Clint were here—he was good at combing at her tangles out. He had more patience than her. 

She curses herself. Thinking about her estranged husband while she’s in a hotel room with another man. And why? Not the sex. It was good. Andrew was an attentive lover. She hadn’t expected it to be like it was with Clint, but it was good. She didn’t have any problems with one night stands, but it had been forever since she’d had one not work-related. She doesn’t feel guilty but something small and sad lingers inside her. Something that feels an awful lot like dissatisfaction. She’s straddling a line between married and single and she can’t decide which way to go. Natasha is right—if she never talks to Clint, she’ll never know. 

The reality is, she doesn’t want to know. Because she already suspects the answer: Clint is still in denial. And he won’t do anything while in denial. She doesn’t blame him, not exactly. He’s too human for this job sometimes, still able to be battered and bruised in ways Bobbi’s long since hardened herself to. Everything weighs heavily on him. She can’t imagine taking on the burdens of the worlds they see. They fight monsters in a way that makes them monsters, but Clint has somehow managed to keep traces of his humanity still. She admires him for it. Most of the time at least. And she loves him for it—he wouldn’t be the man she loved without those vestiges of compassion. Yet sometimes she wonders if this life wouldn’t be easier for him without them. He will never be hard, not like Bobbi, whose empathy was slowly ground out of her, not like Natasha, who was robbed of a life of goodwill. But he could be harder. 

But would she still love a harder man? She thinks of Clint at twenty, still wide-eyed and innocent in so many ways, watching her from across the room as she tortured a man. He had been shocked, she remembers that clearly, and she thinks he had also been repulsed at her. She remembers him shying away from her touch afterward. He’d watched her murder before, she thought at the time, why was this so different? And she knows the answer now—murder is quick. And Clint stays away for his murders usually; an arrow can strike from far enough away that he doesn’t see someone die. It really wasn’t until he came to SHIELD that he killed up close and personal, and he so rarely draws it out, only when he’s feeling exceptionally cruel. He rarely tortures, rarely wants anything to do with something as sadistic as that.

She doesn’t blame him. Sometimes she still hates herself for how easily she can be vicious.

Andrew appears. She can make out his shape behind the shower curtain and is glad he can’t see her face. “Are you leaving?”

“No,” she says. “It’s just been a long day. I felt the need to shower.”

“Want some room service?”

“Yeah,” she says, although she doesn’t think she can eat. But the alcohol is roiling through her veins, making everything a little more hazy. “Order something carb-heavy for me, please. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Andrew makes a noise of agreement and closes the bathroom door behind him.

She shuts the shower off a moment later, wraps herself in a towel, swipes her hand through the condensation on the mirror, and stares at herself. She adjusts her facial expression until she no longer looks haunted and miserable. The shower has added a flush to her cheeks so at least she doesn’t look as pale as she did earlier. She dries quickly and finger combs her hair again, double checks her expression and calmly walks out. 

Andrew smiles at her, and she smiles back. It’s not even fake, she realizes. Tonight’s about her.

–

Clint is halfway through counting the amount of cash he has on hand and calculating whether or not he can make it to his meeting with Madame Veliona in time if he stops at the bank when he realizes what he’s doing. Madame Veliona sells oxycodone, and he is thinking of buying some. He doesn’t even need it. The Aleve works just fine, now that his injuries are starting to heal. 

_Time to admit it you’re an addict_. The thought pops up, unbidden and unwanted but brutally honest. 

He ignores it as best as he can. 

Instead, he carefully folds up the bills he’s still holding in his hand and puts them back in his wallet. He probably doesn’t have enough, anyway. The exchange rates aren’t that good. 

He meets Madame Veliona in the back corner of a small, cramped tea shop. It might have been popular once, but now it was filled with little old ladies drinking pale tea and eating stale sandwiches. Given how expensive London can be, he wonders how this place maintains its rent. When he arrives, she already has a pot of tea and an array of those little, tasteless tea sandwiches. He sits down in one of those overly plush chairs that seems to try to eat you. It’s in a horrible floral pattern. It clashes with Veliona’s traditional Buryat dress. 

“Let’s get on with it, Hawkeye,” she says when he doesn’t immediately say anything. “I’m old. Govorite seychas.” _Speak now._ She is nicknamed after the Slavic goddess of death, and she’s normally terrifying. But her eyes have gone rheumy, and her face, once reminiscent of an older Irina Pantaeva, is wrinkled with age. Her hands, gnarled with arthritis, rest atop of a cane. Has it been that long since he’s last seen her? She taps her cane against the floor and sharply says, “Ne trat' vremya starukhe.” _Do not waste any old woman’s time._

Regaining control of himself, he jumps straight in. She has always preferred plain talking. “HYDRA is murdering children with Nikodem Dubiki’s help.”

“Those two are always murdering children. Bog pomozhet etomu chertu mira.” _God help this hell of a world._

“Why are children the focus of the supersoldier serum tests?”

She throws up her hands. “Count Vermis is an idiot, that is why. You would think, a man that old, a man that powerful—you would think he would know that small children with changing bodies cannot take it. No on durak, poetomu ya ne mogu yemu pomoch'.” _But he is a fool so I cannot help him._

“Vy govorite eto obo vsekh.” _You say that about everyone._

“People are fools. And I will not say otherwise. Vermis, in his infinite wisdom, thought children off the streets would be in marginally better health than the adults. And then he put them through tests by hiring whatever pedophiles he could find off the streets. Eto ne imeyet znacheniya.” _It doesn’t matter._ “Most of them died within hours of being injected.”

“If Sebastian Dubiki has been dying for years, why is Nikodem now getting involved?”

“He wasn’t always the leader, remember. And few know that. Who told you?.”

“Ot zainteresovannogo druga.” _A concerned friend._

“U Niko net druzey v eti dni.” _Niko has no friends these days._

“U takogo cheloveka vsegda yest' druz'ya.” _A man like him always has friends._

“I vragi, kotoryye khoteli by, chtoby on poterpel neudachu. Kto skazal vam pravdu?” _And enemies who would like to see him fail. Who told you?_

“Does it matter? Interpol is closing in on him. I only want to put a stop to the senseless murder of children.”

She studies his face. Her black eyes may be cloudy but they still pierce into him. “Niko has sold all his legitimate companies in the last few months. His family is ended, and soon he and his son will be too. He cares not these days. Vermis doesn’t know this. He thinks Niko fights to live. I think Niko prepares to die. Why else would he send a message to Vermis saying he was close to breaking the secret of the supersoldier serum? He is nowhere close. No one is. And who would want to be? But—and I say this without knowing the full truth, for the record—I think he was hoping the serum, if unlocked, would save his son. It will not. It will kill Seba. He is too young to be given the serum, and he will not live to be old enough.”

“Is this why the children all suffer?”

“Yes. Their bodies cannot handle it. They go into kidney failure, they have heart attacks, they bleed to death. Because they can’t handle the serum.”

“They can’t handle the attempts at making the serum,” he corrects. “We found poisons in the children’s blood.”

“So he is making bad decisions? YA nikogda ne znal, chto on poterpit neudachu.” _I never knew him to fail._ “He will keep trying.”

“Not with Interpol on his tail.”

She harrumphs. “He’ll die before a trial anyway.”

“Is that all you can give me? I know you’re not interested in watching children die.”

“Eto put' mira.” _It’s the way of the world._

“Tak ne dolzhno byt'.” _It shouldn’t be._

“Luchshe vsego videt' vas, govorit po-russki. No vy zadayete slishkom mnogo voprosov. Mne bol'she nechego dobavit'. Niko nichego ne govorit.” _Speaking Russian is the best part of seeing you. But you ask too many questions. I have nothing to add. Niko does not say anything._

The waiter comes. She goes silent. He sighs. “Am I buying?”

“If you would.” She pours herself another cup of tea. “If I may ask something?”

“Of course.”

“What are you doing with the assassin Arachne?”

He wonders how to answer. In the end, he goes for dismissive. “She’s pretty.”

She rolls her eyes. “Bog spas menya ot strastnykh lyudey. Ona sil'na. Ona opasna. I vse zhe vy govorite, chto ona krasivaya.” _God save me from lusty men. She is powerful. She is dangerous. And yet you say she is pretty._

”Nu, da.” He shrugs. _Well she is._

“Chernaya vdova tozhe dovol'no. I opasno. I moshchnyy.” _The Black Widow is also pretty. And dangerous. And powerful._

“Da, da, i ya do sikh por ne skazhu, kak my vstretilis'.” _Yes, she is and I still won’t tell you how we met._

“Po krayney mere, rasskazhi mne, kak ona seychas.” _At least tell me how she’s doing._

“V lyubvi ili okolo togo ona govorit.” _She’s in love or so she says._

“Ty vlyublen v eti dni?” _Are you in love these days?_

“YA vsegda vlyublen.” _I’m always in love._

“Govoryat, kak muzhchina.” _Spoken like a man._

“Chto by vy skazali, yesli by ya skazal vam, chto ya zhenat?” _What would you say if I told you I was married?_

“YA by skazal, chto ty lzhesh', i ya budu prav.” _I’d say you were lying and I’d be right._

He doesn’t correct her. He supposes she’s not wrong after all.

–

He wakes up to it in the middle of the night, repeating itself tirelessly, an unrelenting mantra in his head: _You’re an addict._

It’s easy to ignore the voice during the day. It’s easy to ignore the dull but persistent headache during the day. It’s easy to ignore his shaking hands or the way he wants to lash out at everything. He drinks so rarely on missions, and every drop is a blessing.

_You’re an addict._

Clint climbs out of bed. They’re in a SHIELD safe house, tucked away from the lights of the nearby city. He doesn’t remember where they are now. Just at a cabin in the woods. It would be romantic on another night but all he can think of is the bar they passed by on the way in. He won’t go, can’t go. Jessica will hear the car starting. Maria would kill him.

It’s so easy to avoid during the day. There is information to be sorted through and people to talk to. There’s training and keeping an eye on Jessica and trying to coax a smile out of Maria. There’s nothing to do when he can’t sleep. Everything is under lock and key in Maria’s bedroom.

He stumbles into the bathroom, rubs absently at his aching ears. It’s time to give himself a break from the mission grade hearing aids. At least his ears aren’t bleeding yet—that’s one less problem he has to deal with it. He turns the tap on, watches the water sputter to life. It’s ice cold but refreshing when he splashes his face. 

_You’re an addict._

He drinks from the tap but the water tastes bitter. He shuts it off, wipes his face on the tails of his shirt. He’s fine. He’s just fine. He hadn’t asked Madame Veliona for her oxycodone tablets, hadn’t asked Klemen this afternoon for the vials of morphine he sells from time to time to people he likes. And Clint was proud of himself. For the most part. He wanted nothing more than the bliss of a shot of morphine, after all. To not even ask for it was a good thing as far as he was concerned.

If only he could stay off the alcohol as well as he stayed off the painkillers. 

He hadn’t ever meant to turn into his father. Or—he hadn’t meant to drink as much as him. But there was a certain level of euphoria in being too out of it to care. Too out of it to remember how much blood you had on your hands. Too out of it to remember the dead, tortured body of a child—or many of them, all piled up on top of each other in a corner like trash. Too out of it to remember you hadn’t acted fast enough to save them.

He grips at the wall, finds the edge of a table to hold on to. It’s a useless attempt; his fingers refuse to hold on to anything as they spasm along with the rest of his body. Unable to hold himself up anymore, he sinks to the floor. He manages not to throw up, but only barely, and when he regains control of his body again, he finds himself barely able to stand up on his own. He settles into a position at the wall, taking long deep breaths and trying to calm his racing heart. 

So that beer he had this afternoon wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he should have taken the morphine after all. 

_You’re an addict._

He forces himself to stand. It’s no worse than trying to stand with four broken ribs and a bullet dangerous lodged between vital organs.

He manages to make it to the kitchen. He drinks two glasses of the juice they bought at the market earlier. By then his hands aren’t shaking anymore. He checks the time; it’s not even three yet. He has hours to go before anyone wakes. It’s rare he wakes up this early. Usually it’s closer to five in the morning, where he can at least pretend he’s doing okay.

Hunger assails him suddenly, quickly followed by nausea. It’s always like this, the first few hours after a drink. Or seven. He sinks into the closest chair, an uncomfortable stool with the wood no longer smooth, but at least he has something to focus on other than his churning stomach.

He has no idea how long he stays like that, but he stays until his stomach is somewhat settled and the mantra _you’re an addict_ has turned from accusing to sympathetic.

He stays until he’s made a decision that he never wanted to make.

With deliberate calm, he walks to the phone in the corner. It’s connected only to SHIELD, and people who call from it usually have a problem. 

He has a problem.

Admitting it is the first step, right?

He goes through the steps: code name, badge number, clearance level, home base, who he wants to talk to. It’s automated. He thinks about talking to Fury but skips that idea, not ready to admit to his boss how bad he was, if Fury was even there. He asks for McKay instead. When he answers, smooth and unwavering as ever, Clint says, without even meaning to, “I need help.” His voice sounds desperate and raw.

McKay is silent for a moment. “What do you need, Hawkeye?”

Clint clears his throat, takes a deep steadying breath, and says, “I’m requesting medical extraction for addiction.”


End file.
